The inquiry into Britain's worst residential fire since the Blitz has taken seven years, and uncovered an extraordinary range of failings

What was the inquiry's main finding?
"The simple truth," said the inquiry chair, retired judge Martin Moore-Bick, is that the deaths of 54 adults and 18 children in Grenfell Tower in west London "were all avoidable, and those who lived in the tower were badly failed over a number of years, and in a number of different ways, by those who were responsible for ensuring the safety of the building and its occupants". At 00.54 on 14 June 2017, Behailu Kebede called the London Fire Brigade, because a fire had broken out in his kitchen in Flat 16, on the fourth floor of the tower – caused by a malfunctioning fridge-freezer. The first fire engine was on the scene by 00.59; a "relatively modest" kitchen fire had been put out by 01.21. But by then the fire had broken out of the kitchen window, where it spread shockingly fast: by 01.27 it had reached the roof of the 24-storey building. By around 04.00, it had reached all sides of the tower.

Why did the fire spread so fast?
The "principal" reason is that, during renovations in 2015-16, Grenfell's fireproof concrete shell was clad in combustible aluminium composite material (ACM): Reynobond 55 PE, made by Arconic out of two thin sheets of aluminium with a flammable polyethyelene core. Particularly when used not as flat panels but folded into "cassette form" so it could be hung from rails, the polyethyelene core "burns fiercely". Playing a smaller but still crucial part was combustible insulation – installed between the cladding and the concrete wall. The insulation mostly used was RS5000, a polyisocyanurate foam made by Celotex (which releases toxic gas when it burns), with some made by Kingspan. Because of all this, "compartmentation" – the principle that fires should not be able to spread from flat to flat – failed catastrophically.

Why were combustible materials used on a tower block?
Initially, the architects, Studio E, wanted to use non-combustible zinc panels, but they chose ACM under pressure over costs from the Tenant Management Organisation, part of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC), which owned Grenfell; it saved £293,368 on a £9.2 million refurbishment. As to why it was possible to use dangerous cladding at all, the inquiry found that "one very significant reason" was "systematic dishonesty on the part of those who made and sold the rainscreen cladding panels and insulation products": Arconic, Celotex and Kingspan "engaged in deliberate and sustained strategies to manipulate the testing processes, misrepresent test data and mislead the market".

Why wasn't this stopped?
The regulators weren’t good enough. The Arconic and Kingspan products were certified by the BBA, a privatised certification body. The BBA was found both "incompetent" and willing to accommodate clients instead of insisting on rigorous standards. Other building product regulators and government bodies were similarly incompetent. It was an extraordinary chain of regulatory failure, running all the way to Whitehall. The building control section of RBKC, the council, "did not properly scrutinise the design or choice of materials", and waved through cladding that did not comply with building regulations on fire safety. The council's Tenant Management Organisation, which ran the building, never completed an approved fire-safety strategy. Key fire-protection measures, such as working fire doors, were lacking.

How did central government fail?
On numerous occasions before the fire, the then Department for Communities and Local Government was given clear warnings about the dangers of ACM cladding and other combustible materials being used in high-rise blocks: there had been a series of cladding fires, dating back to 1991, notably one that killed six at Lakanal House in London in 2009, which led to a public warning from the coroner. The department failed to act; failures reached back decades, but under David Cameron's coalition it was understaffed, and ministers' "deregulatory agenda" meant that "even matters affecting the safety of life were ignored, delayed or disregarded". One relatively junior civil servant, Brian Martin, was given overall responsibility for fire-safety measures, with little supervision. "I ended up being the single point of failure in the department," he tearfully told the inquiry.

What about the architects and the builders?
The inquiry found that the architect Studio E, which led the renovations, bore a "very significant responsibility" for the disaster. It was "cavalier" and in many respects did not "meet the standards of a reasonably competent architect". The two main contractors, Rydon and Harley Facades, were also culpable. "Everyone involved in the choice of the materials to be used in the external wall thought that responsibility for their suitability and safety lay with someone else." Studio E instructed a consultant, Exova, to prepare a fire-safety strategy for the refurbished building. It was never finished, and Studio E failed to ensure that it was completed.

And the fire brigade?
On 14 June, firefighters of the London Fire Brigade "displayed extraordinary courage and selfless devotion to duty", the inquiry found, but they were "faced with a situation for which they had not been properly prepared". It issued a "stay put" order, on the basis that compartmentation of the fire would work: residents were told to stay in their flats. This wasn't reversed until 02.47, about an hour after it should have been. There was also no coherent evacuation strategy. In addition, on the night, firefighters' radio systems failed and the control room was overwhelmed. Behind all this were "serious" and "systematic" failings on the part of management. The Lakanal House fire had already exposed shortcomings in the service's ability to fight fires in high-rises; it was aware of the potential dangers of cladding fires; but it failed to prepare.

"Someone who gives a damn"
From 2005, Arconic, the French wing of a US metals conglomerate, had clear test results showing that its Reynobond 55 PE cladding, in cassette form, "reacted to fire in a very dangerous way", and could not be classified as meeting EU safety standards. Senior officials discussed this issue in emails marked "confidential". Despite this, and despite being aware of a series of cladding fires, it continued to sell its product in places with "weak regulatory regimes", such as the UK. After further tests in 2013, Arconic downgraded the product's EU safety classification. But its UK sales team did not pass this on to its customers, and sold it using fire-performance claims it "knew to be false".

For its part, the insulation company Celotex knowingly gamed the fire tests – using fire-resistant boards – and marketed its RS5000 foam for use in buildings above 18 metres high, despite knowing of the dangers: an earlier test created an "inferno". Celotex was following the example of the market leader, the Irish company Kingspan, which falsely claimed that its product was safe, despite "disastrous" tests for its Kooltherm K15 insulation. When asked about safety issues by a client, a technical manager wrote: "I think they are getting me confused with someone who gives a dam [sic]." 

For members of the Pélicot family, one date will be etched on their memories forever, said Luc Leroux in Le Monde. It was on 2 November 2020, in a police station in southern France, that Gisèle Pélicot, now 72, was told what investigators had found on her husband Dominique's computer: tens of thousands of images of her being raped and sodomised by him and by scores of strangers, while she was drugged and unconscious.

In court last week, where 51 men, including Dominique Pélicot, are on trial, Gisèle testified that she had no idea of her husband's depravity; their marriage had been happy, their sex life conventional. Her world had "collapsed" when she saw herself lying like a "rag doll" in her bed, being "sacrificed on the altar of vice". Her daughter, on being told of what her father had done, had screamed "like a wild beast". One of her sons had vomited.

This case has so many horrible details it is hard to select the worst, said Hadley Freeman in The Sunday Times. Was it the allegation that Pélicot had allowed a man who was HIV positive to rape his wife six times? Or that, out of the 80 that he invited to his house, only three left when they realised that Gisèle was unconscious? Much has also been made of the seeming normality of many of the defendants: they include nurses, civil servants, a journalist and a firefighter. But when it comes to the cruelties men are capable of inflicting, I am past feeling surprised. This case is unusual; but the misogynistic attitudes that enabled it – that women are "meat puppets", whose purpose is to pleasure men – are not. They are shared by men who use prostitutes; by those who get off on flashing women, harassing them and groping them; and they are promoted online, where porn has normalised the view that, for women, sex should be painful and humiliating.

It was on a dark corner of the web that Pélicot lurked, said Nabila Ramdani in The i Paper. On the Coco platform, he joined a chatroom called Without Their Knowledge, where he found no shortage of men who wanted to rape his wife (though many of the defendants claim they thought the sex was consensual). Coco was facilitating a range of "unspeakable" crimes; yet it was only closed down in June.

Many see this as evidence that sexual violence is still not taken seriously enough in France, said Peter Conradi in The Sunday Times; and it's telling too that most of the alleged rapists in this case are not in custody; and that it has not made front-page news in France. That is why Gisèle Pélicot waived her right to anonymity: she wanted people to know the evil that men do.

These days, Michael Sheen refers to himself as "a not-for-profit actor", says Simon Hattenstone in The Guardian. Now 55, he has left Los Angeles, and moved back to a village next to his home town of Port Talbot in South Wales, where he uses his earnings to support community projects. When he was growing up there, in a comfortably-off home, he had no interest in social justice: his focus was on acting, and in his teens he went off to Rada, where he aimed to become "the greatest actor of all time".

It was only years later, when he revisited Port Talbot, that he got a sense of the realities of life in the town. He met one group, for instance, who supported young carers. He didn't even know what that meant. He was told that these were children who supported a family member, and that the group offered them a bit of respite by taking them bowling or to the cinema once a week. He went along, and met a child of eight who looked after their mother and siblings. Next time he visited, the group was gone, its funding cut.

But his altruism was also spurred by a reassessment of his own life. He'd thought, he said, that his success had been down to his own talent; that he'd made his own luck. But as he got older, "I became more aware of the opportunity I'd had in an area where there wasn't much opportunity. At a certain point you go, Oh, people are having to volunteer to make that youth theatre happen…"