Working Together for Safety: Tower Hamlets' Promise after the Grenfell Inquiry

The Grenfell Tower fire was a devastating tragedy that took 72 lives, affected survivors, and impacted the entire community. The Grenfell Tower Inquiry Phase 2 report found systemic and repeated failures that led to a disaster which could have been avoided.

We offer our deepest condolences to the victims, survivors, and everyone affected by this event.

The report shows that poor decisions were made by organisations, using weak regulations and safety systems. As partners committed to the safety of all residents in Tower Hamlets, we know we must act on the recommendations in this report.

Since the tragedy, steps have been taken to improve building safety in the UK, but the report shows that more needs to be done.

Improving safety

Locally, we have taken action to improve safety in our own buildings and systems in response to the tragedy. The council now has a dedicated building safety team for its housing stock, has completed fire safety strategies for its 23,000 homes and high-risk buildings, and has laser scanned all high-risk buildings. The council secured the first Remediation Order in the country.

We are continuing to strengthen our emergency response arrangements through a programme of comprehensive training packages, increasing our arrangements for financial assistance and enhancing our partnership with voluntary and community organisations. London Fire Brigade works to create robust systems to gather, review and implement lessons from previous incidents.

Working with our partners

Partnerships are key to achieving lasting change. Together, we can make a real difference. In our civil leadership role, we have brought partners together to pledge to:

Implement recommendations

We will work with the Government, residents and industry to quickly and fully adopt the report’s recommendations.

Ensure accountability

We support the creation of a strong regulatory body to oversee building safety and enforce high standards.

Collaborative change

We will work with communities to build trust, practice transparency, and prioritise safety in housing and construction.

The council continues to work closely with LFB and the partners on the Civil Contingency and Borough Resilience Forums to ensure the approach is continually updated to reflect best practise and legislation as it is passed.

A safer future starts now

This tragedy was a failure of the system meant to protect residents. We must make sure the lessons from Grenfell lead to real change. Housing safety is a basic right and we all have a responsibility to prevent such a disaster from happening again.

Together, we will honour those we lost by taking meaningful action.