A forensics officer inspects debris at the scene of a fire in Lakanal House. Photo: PA

Let’s start with a simple fact: the fire at Grenfell Tower was predictable and preventable. And it could still happen somewhere else today. It happened because local, city and national governments failed to intervene on fire safety the last time they were called on to do so.

At the conclusion of the 2013 inquest into the 2009 Lakanal House fire, which killed six people, ministers and public officials were given firm recommendations by the coroner. At the core of these was the advice that the “stay put” policy—which advises residents of tower blocks to stay in their homes, to compartmentalise the fire – be reviewed.

A failure to rectify big holes in the fire safety regime for public housing made a fire like the one at Grenfell Tower almost inevitable—even after the hard lessons learned in the wake of Lakanal. One of my abiding memories as a special correspondent for the BBC covering the Lakanal House inquest, was when a witness said: “I can’t imagine what would have happened if this fire had broken out at night.” Now we know.

Blame game

There is a sense in which the plight of residents—so much in the news in the wake of Grenfell—was poorly served by the media in the years after Lakanal. Little public scrutiny, for example, of whether the recommendations of the Lakanal inquest had been implemented, and little outrage at politicians passing the buck when changes were clearly necessary. When disaster befell Grenfell, journalistic overdrive could not bring back those lost lives. Journalists had missed the boat.

Emily Bell, formerly of the Guardian, said it was a sign of the demise of a robust local press. There is something to be said for that argument. No investigative instincts were needed to pick up on the fire safety risks that the Grenfell Action Group repeatedly raised on their public website—journalists just needed to convince an editor it was a story worth telling.

I’m afraid the evidence shows that between 2013 and 2017, journalism failed to hold those responsible for fire safety to account—with the exception of specialist journal Inside Housing, which made this a key topic of interest.

For the media to now condemn the London Fire Brigade for the problems at…

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