Grenfell Inquiry report delayed until next year

The second and final part of the Grenfell Inquiry report is now not expected to be published until next year, the team behind it has said.

The report will be sent off to the prime minister who will then decide when to publish it. It had been expected to be published towards the end of this year but an update from the inquiry team said it would not be sent to Rishi Sunak until early next year.

The update said: “We recognise that everyone involved in the Inquiry wants the report to be published as soon as possible and we fully understand the importance that has for them and for the wider public. However, it is also important that, as what we hope will be regarded as the definitive version of events, the report is complete and accurate.”

It said “individual chapters are at different stages of drafting and several stages still remain to be completed” and added: “We shall send the report to the prime minister, as required by our terms of reference, as soon as we can but that will probably not be possible before the beginning of next year.

“The prime minister will decide when the report will be published and by whom, but we are ready to act quickly if he asks us to publish it, as we think likely.”

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The inquiry team said it had disclosed nearly 300,000 documents under the second stage of the inquiry.

The first phase of the report, which looked at the events on the day of the fire, which killed 72 people in June 2017, was published in October 2019.

The second phase of the inquiry saw the last of the in-person evidence given last summer with closing statements made last autumn. This phase has looked at the refurbishment work carried out on the tower, first built in 1974, and the sort of materials used in the cladding work.