Grenfell Inquiry – a call for action and justice

The Grenfell fire stands as a symbol of years of austerity, deregulation, privatisation, and chronic underinvestment in social housing have prioritised profit over people. It is also a stark reflection of the racial and class inequalities in our society: claiming the lives of mainly Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) and working-class residents, with many of the victims members of our unions. 

The inquiry underscores what we knew: that those deaths were avoidable and that institutional failures in regulation and oversight were the primary causes. This points to an urgent need for reform to ensure that such a catastrophe can never be repeated. 

Our recommendations for government are: 

1. Remove all existing flammable cladding: Six years on, and 600,000 people still reside in tower blocks wrapped in dangerous cladding, with millions more in mid-rise buildings. What’s more, in almost every city centre in Britain there are dozens of office blocks with dangerous cladding, making them a potential firetrap for the people who work there. And while cladding is now banned on new homes over 18 metres high, developers are still being given the green light to build office blocks, stadiums, concert halls and private schools with combustible cladding, putting hundreds of thousands of workers at risk. The new government must do what the last one failed to: set out a plan to remove dangerous cladding, starting with the most high-risk buildings. 
2. Adequately fund the Building Safety Regulator: The inquiry recommended a unified regulatory body to oversee all aspects of building safety. This has now been established by the Health and Safety Executive: but the body itself has suffered more than a decade of Tory cuts, with its budget 54% smaller than when the Tories first came to power. We need a single regulator to ensure transparency, accountability, and consistency across the industry, but to do that effectively, it must have adequate resources.  
3. Ban unsafe materials and firms: Companies made big profits by selling dangerous materials, and by fabricating and manipulating data to deceive people into believing their products were safe. The government must act on the inquiry’s recommendation to ban these firms from future public contracts. It must also go further: banning flammable cladding not just from residential buildings, but from workplaces, too.  
4. Implement stronger fire safety regulations: The last Tory government's deregulation agenda prior to the fire allowed serious concerns about fire safety to be ignored. The new government can now revisit and strengthen fire safety laws, ensuring that the lessons from Grenfell and other fires, are applied across the country, with adequately resourced fire and rescue teams, and a statutory body to advise on fire policy, providing a voice for firefighters and control staff.  
5. Mandatory retrofitting of older buildings: Retrofitting buildings with non-combustible materials should be a government priority. There are still thousands of buildings across Britain with dangerous cladding. Removing and replacing these materials, especially in social housing, must be fully funded and expedited. The government should enforce strict timelines for these safety improvements and provide financial support to prevent delays.  

As trade unionists, our fight for justice doesn’t stop at the door of our own workplaces. We care for our communities and the wider working class. It is why so many of us have joined the call for justice for Grenfell, and continue to support the struggle of social housing residents across the country seeking safety from similar hazards. We recognise that often, bosses and the state work hand-in-glove at our expense, and the consequences are inequality, institutional racism and an indifference toward the lives of working-class people.   

Grenfell marked a moment when not only a tower, but trust in the British state itself, burned under the weight of injustice. Trade unionists stand in solidarity with the Grenfell survivors and join them in demanding justice, ensuring that those responsible for this avoidable tragedy are held to account. We stand with the firefighters, the FBU members who ran toward danger, risking their own lives, to save others on that night and so many more. 

The Grenfell Tower fire was a preventable disaster that exposed decades of neglect. The government has no choice but to act swiftly and comprehensively. Anything less would be a continued betrayal of the Grenfell community and a failure to prioritise the safety of the public. Now is the time for bold, systemic change to save lives. 

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TUC reps guide on fire safety