Why fire and rescue services still have some way to go post-Grenfell tragedy

As the years pass by, the devastating effects of the tragic fire at Grenfell Tower continue to reverberate across the local community, the capital and beyond. Those affected understandably want to be assured that lessons have been learnt and recommendations made are being acted on quickly. The fire also put the London Fire Brigade into focus and fundamentally changed how fire services across the UK – and indeed the world – respond to fires in high-rise buildings.

You’ll be aware that the Grenfell Tower Inquiry Phase 1 report made recommendations in 2019 to improve fire and rescue services’ responses to major incidents. These focused on communication, coordination, and staff training. Since then, we as the inspectorate have been monitoring the overall progress that services have made against some of these recommendations without obligation from the Inquiry. It is vital that lessons are learnt from this tragedy and real and sustainable changes are made to make sure something like this never happens again.

Last month, I set out a general assessment of progress in a letter to Minister of State for Crime, Policing and Fire Dame Diana Johnson, focusing on 25 of England’s 44 services we have inspected so far in our current round of inspections. And from these, it was clear that many services have made improvements in how they train for, communicate about, and plan operations for major incidents.

All 25 services have brought in policies for handling multiple and simultaneous fire safety guidance calls and for managing the transition from a “stay put” policy to a “get out” policy. It was also positive to see that some services have adopted innovative practices, such as using electronic systems to manage fire survival guidance. The hard work of firefighters and other staff is evident in this progress.

But some areas still need improvements, particularly in providing training, maintaining accurate records, and using electronic systems to manage incidents. We also found a lack of coordination between services or that learnings were not being shared. For example, across all 25 services we saw evidence of training being completed to make sure staff understand the risk of fire spreading in external cladding. But when we spoke to staff, we found that in some services, this was being provided inconsistently or was not understood.

Similarly, we found that all the services we inspected had developed procedures for managing the full and partial evacuation of a large number of people. And training exercises to practice these procedures were evident across all the services. But only 11 out of 25 services had an electronic system in place to support these processes. Instead, most relied on manual methods such as whiteboards. In some cases, this meant control room staff were not kept up to date with information about casualties.

One promising step forward is the development of the multi-agency incident transfer system, which offers a way for control rooms at different services to share information about incidents digitally. But there are challenges with its implementation, particularly about capacity and resourcing. It will require more resources and a focused commitment from services to see it come to fruition.

Of course, through our inspections and engaging with services regularly, we acknowledge and understand the scale of the challenges many are dealing with. The countless examples we continue to see of commitment and dedication to keep the public safe do not go unnoticed. As an inspectorate, it is our role to hold a mirror up to services, to help them to more clearly see where improvements are needed and support them to make sustainable changes for the better. This is a fundamental part of our monitoring process, to make sure progress is maintained.

While our assessment process is ongoing, we are now looking ahead to the next round of inspections for 2025-27. I will explore this more soon, but one aspect will be the conclusions and recommendations made in the inquiry’s Phase 2 report, which was published in September last year. We will continue the approach we have taken to address the Phase 1 recommendations about those from Phase 2. And we will continue to support services to make sure they are doing so.

Successful implementation is key to making sure that everyone – including those affected by the fire and the public at large – can be assured that fire and rescue services are equipped to deal effectively with this type of incident in future. It is also part of our commitment as an inspectorate to help make communities safer.

Norman Murray

See Full Bio