Irish Examiner View: Five years on from Grenfell, little has changed

More than 10,000 leaseholders are still trapped in unsaleable apartments with fire safety defects comparable to Grenfell.

Smoke and flames rise from Grenfell Tower in London, Wednesday, June 14, 2017. Picture: Matt Dunham/AP

It was timely for Channel 4 to run a version of the verbatim play Value Engineering to coincide with the anniversary of the Grenfell Tower high rise disaster which took the lives of 72 people on a summer night five years ago yesterday.

This production recounts, in their own words, how architects, builders, politicians, firefighters, safety experts, financial directors, and construction managers failed to ask the right questions at the right time in an appalling series of decisions which led to a catastrophe.

‘Value engineering’ is an industry term for reducing the costs of a project to a point where a contract can be secured.

The British government has so far refused to take up the inquiry’s call for personal evacuation plans to be in place for all disabled high-rise residents.

Some 40% of those who died in Grenfell were registered as disabled. More than a third of fire and rescue services have yet to act on recommendations that the controversial “stay put” strategies in the event of a spreading fire should be scrapped.

More than 10,000 leaseholders are trapped in unsaleable apartments with fire safety defects comparable to Grenfell and more than 100 buildings wrapped in the cladding which proved to be so fatal have yet to have work fully completed. On another 30, work has not even commenced yet.

Accountability, and the probability of criminal prosecutions, are still to follow. 

For now, the best advice to ensure that nothing like Grenfell could happen here is to understand, in detail, what happened there.