Grenfell Inquiry says final report will not be published before April next year

Grenfell Tower in west London (Jonathan Brady/PA) (PA Wire)

The Grenfell Inquiry has said its final report will not be published before April next year.

The inquiry’s team said its panel was hoping to send its phase two report to the Prime Minister before the next anniversary of the fire on June 14 and publish it “soon thereafter”.

It added that the process of writing to those who may be subject to criticism was “proving time-consuming”.

The inquiry team said chapters are at different stages of drafting and several are yet to be completed.

In a monthly newsletter, published on its website on Friday, the inquiry’s team wrote: “Not only do we have to allow recipients a reasonable time to respond to potential criticisms, but we also have to analyse their responses in order to decide whether we need to modify our provisional conclusions or the way in which we have expressed them.”

The inquiry team said it was “probably” more than halfway through this process, having sent out more than 100 letters so far.

As things stand, the report will not be published before April next year but the panel hopes to be able to send it to the Prime Minister before the next anniversary of the fire with publication soon thereafter

The Grenfell Inquiry

It added in its newsletter: “The amount of evidence, both oral and documentary, that the inquiry has collected makes the drafting of a report a very time-consuming task and the process of preparing and printing a work of this size will take a considerable number of weeks.

“As things stand, the report will not be published before April next year but the panel hopes to be able to send it to the Prime Minister before the next anniversary of the fire with publication soon thereafter.”

The final hearing took place in November 2022 and a panel and inquiry team have been working on their phase two report since then.

Phase two examined how the tower block in North Kensington, London came to be in a condition that allowed the fire on 14 June 2017 to spread.

The report into phase one, which focused on the factual narrative of the events on the night of the fire, was published in October 2019.

It concluded the tower’s cladding did not comply with building regulations and was the “principal” reason for the rapid and “profoundly shocking” spread of the blaze.