Responsibility for the Grenfell Tower fire in London revealed

Seven years after the Grenfell Tower fire, a public housing building in West London that caught fire on June 14, 2017, claiming 72 lives,  the inquiry's report blamed a number of factors: cost-cutting, incompetence, dishonest sales practices and overly lax regulation.

The 1,671-page report published last Wednesday, which accuses unscrupulous builders as well as the local government, highlights how all these factors led to the selection of particularly cheap and flammable cladding for the building. The local council, in an effort to cut costs, allegedly collaborated with negligent and complacent contractors who agreed to install combustible cladding panels, purchased from suppliers who knew they should not have been used on such tall buildings. The suppliers reportedly employed various strategies to manipulate testing processes, falsify data, and essentially deceive the market, as stated in the report.

Among the harshest criticisms is the name of Arconic, a U.S. aluminum manufacturer. The report claims that the company deliberately concealed the true extent of the danger from the market when selling the cladding for Grenfell Tower. However, Arconic continues to assert that the product sold was "safe for use as a building material" and has refused to send a representative to speak with the victims' families. The Grenfell Tower incident remains a tangible political symbol of the potentially lethal dangers of deregulation and social inequalities that affect not only London but the entire world.

Opening image: Grenfell Tower, 14 June 2017, 4.43 am. Photo Natalie Oxford