15-05-2025
A replica tower block in an 'evidence room' big enough to fit 25 London buses. 12,000 witness statements, 152m documents and a £100m taxpayer bill. Why, eight years on, Grenfell victims fear they'll never see justice
No one would ever guess it, but a warehouse big enough to park 25 double-decker buses inside, at an undisclosed location somewhere in London, has become an unlikely base for the police investigation into the Grenfell fire.
The premises, in fact, resembles a branch of B&Q. The entire exterior of what remained of the 24-storey block, dismantled piece by piece for forensic analysis, is stored inside: cladding panels, insulation, doors, windows and every last nut, bolt and screw that was salvaged.
It is quite possibly the biggest 'evidence room' – more than 27,000 exhibits have been assembled – anywhere in the world.
It is here that the Metropolitan Police are now planning to construct a replica of part of the tower block, 'built to detailed specification and full-scale', to help juries at any future trials understand how the fire, which claimed the lives of 72 people, including 18 children, spread in the early hours of June 14, 2017.
Obviously, the 'new tower' would not fit inside a courtroom so jurors would be taken on a site visit to the warehouse.
The proposed course of action was revealed by Det Supt Garry Moncrieff, the senior investigating officer, in a letter to victims' families and survivors. Few could doubt the painstaking dedication involved in such a project, nor the resilience of individual rank-and-file officers themselves, who have worked tirelessly to leave no stone unturned in their pursuit of the truth of what happened that night.
But after eight years and counting, amid escalating costs and interminable hold-ups – not to mention a six-year public inquiry, the final 1,700-page report from which was published last September – the latest revelation has left the families of victims and survivors dismayed despite assurances from the Met that the reconstruction would not 'impact on our timescales or cause any delay'.
'Will we ever get justice?' they are asking today.
It's a valid question: the investigation will not be concluded until at least September 2026, at the earliest, with any trials possibly stretching well into the 2030s.
The old saying 'justice delayed is justice denied' could have been coined with Grenfell in mind, especially when the final police bill is likely to top £100million. The number of officers working on the case has been increased to 180 at a cost of almost £24million this year alone, it has now emerged.
'Many of us do not want the police to be given a penny more,' said Kimia Zabihyan, advocate for the group Grenfell Next of Kin, a volunteer who delivered clothing and food to those who needed help in the immediate aftermath of the inferno and has now become a voice for the bereaved.
'They believe their grief has become an exploitable commodity. More than one relative I have spoken to has used the word 'extortion' because to them it feels just like that, like the Met is saying, 'If you want justice, you've got to keep paying us', and the response of central government is to keep writing a blank cheque.
'No one is really watching or, if they are, they are too scared to speak out because it might look like you are going against victims. But the families I speak to feel exactly the same way.
'The latest idea, to build a replica tower, is extraordinary. The attitude of relatives now is, 'Enough is enough.' They fear that they may never see justice.'
Their frustration is understandable. Companies involved in the catastrophic refurbishment of Grenfell Tower, situated on a council estate in North Kensington next to some of the capital's most expensive postcodes, were accused of displaying a 'cavalier attitude' to fire safety.
Sir Martin Moore-Bick's inquiry report also blamed a culture of 'systematic dishonesty' among construction firms who provided cladding and other materials that left the block coated in highly flammable materials.
The executives who run these firms, which have raked in hundreds of millions of pounds in the years since the tragedy, enjoy six-figure salaries, drive luxury cars and live in palatial homes. The contrast between their privileged lifestyles and the fate of victims and their families is an enduring and uncomfortable sub-plot to the scandal in which, to quote a former fire officer at the time, 'there was a failure of every component of fire safety and building management'.
This is the wider narrative to Kimia Zabihyan and the Grenfell Next of Kin's condemnation of the timeline and cost of the criminal investigation codenamed Operation Northleigh.
It began on the night of the tragedy. Since then, more than 27,000 separate lines of inquiry have been followed up, more than 12,000 witness statements taken, more than 152million documents and files retrieved, and more than 50 suspects connected to 19 companies or organisations involved in the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower, which included the fitting of flammable cladding, have been interviewed under caution.
The deadline for the completion of the investigation has already been put back six months from March next year to September 2026, which means decisions over any potential criminal charges will not be taken until 2027 – ten years and counting, in other words, from the actual fire.
Little wonder that costs have escalated dramatically, despite cutbacks in overall police spending. So far, eight of the 20 'early investigative advice files' have been submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
Each file examines a full range of offences: corporate manslaughter, manslaughter, gross negligence, fraud and health and safety breaches. Just one of those files, relating to a single company and its employees, runs to 535 pages, referencing in excess of 1,200 supporting evidential documents. Printed out, that file stands at almost 7ft high.
Turning all this into criminal charges will be a monumental task. Corporate manslaughter, in particular, is notoriously difficult to prove. Some 1,600 statements taken from witnesses, both corporate and the general public, for the public inquiry into the blaze have also been evaluated.
But in order to ensure any potential suspects from the companies concerned did not refuse to co-operate, they were given a legal undertaking that their answers could not be used in any future prosecution on the basis that to do so would risk self-incrimination, which is a right granted to every citizen in law.
It meant detectives, gathering evidence for the criminal case, could read and review all the statements, but none of them would be admissable in court.
In fact, if they did want to follow up on any of the statements, they would have to go through the whole interview process again.
Both the agonisingly slow progress and the increasingly heavy burden falling on taxpayers have been compounded, many believe, by the fact that the public inquiry took priority over the police inquiry. 'Obviously, public inquiries are important but they should not be weaponised against the criminal justice system,' said Kimia.
There are a number of reasons, she said, why relatives believe this is what has happened. Firstly, police had to wait for the inquiry to finish before concluding their own inquiries, which has delayed any charges being brought.
'There was injustice from day one when the inquiry was forced upon us, which delayed the criminal process,' said Hisam Choucair, 46, a former Transport for London operations officer whose family was trapped on the 22nd floor, causing six of them to die, including three young nieces.
'It has put an extra nail in the coffin and in our hearts.'
Secondly, the families are convinced that lawyers for the defence will exploit the shortcomings in the public inquiry.
'They are going to stand up, even if charges are brought, and say that their clients can't get a fair trial because of all the negative publicity they have received,' added Kimia.
'So, you've literally created an opportunity for serious charges to be kicked out of court.'
Then there's the matter of compensation to victims. The inquiry itself cost £173million, with more than £60million going to lawyers – something Shah Aghlani, who lost his mother and aunt in the fire, finds hard to process.
'There are legitimate next of kin, people who lost their husband or wife or child, who have been completely ignored by the compensation process,' he said.
'Yet hundreds of millions of pounds from the public purse is thrown around for lawyers, the police and for the fire brigade.'
And the CPS is still years away from putting those blamed for the disaster in the dock. Arconic is one such company. The French outfit made the deadly cladding panels that the inquiry identified as the 'principal reason' the flames spread so rapidly. The firm knew the material posed a risk because it had performed badly in fire tests but 'deliberately concealed' the true extent of the danger by not informing the BBA, a private British certification company responsible for keeping the construction industry up to date.
As a result, the BBA unwittingly made statements that Arconic knew were 'false and misleading'.
There are more than 50 'suspects', as we now know, involved in the scandalous refurbishment of Grenfell Tower who have been interviewed under caution.
But the one thing, rightly or wrongly, that unites victims and their families, including Maria Jafari who survived but lost her father Ali in the fire, is the belief that the police are no nearer delivering any kind of justice.
'We genuinely believed in the system, trusting they were designed to help us,' said Karim Khalloufi, whose sister Khadija was among the 72 who died.
'But we have been misled down the path of false hope.'
The Met stressed that 'no final decision' has been taken on the reconstruction project.
It issued this statement: 'The Grenfell Tower fire is one of the most complex investigations ever undertaken by any UK law enforcement agency . . . the circumstances are highly unusual in that the criminal investigation and the public inquiry have been conducted at the same time, examining many of the same issues. Though both have examined the same tragedy, their purposes are very different and are conducted to different legal standards.
'We cannot begin to imagine the impact that waiting for the outcome of our investigation must have on those who lost loved ones, those who survived, and all those affected by the tragedy.
'However, it is critical that we take great care to get this investigation right and we have a dedicated team of 180 investigators, supported by leading experts, ensuring that we work as quickly as possible without compromising the quality of what we do.
'At the conclusion of our investigation we will pass on a file to the Crown Prosecution Service for charging. That is an independent consideration for the CPS.'
It's hard to argue, in principle, at least, with that statement. Nevertheless, a decade will have passed by the time the investigation is completed, with no guarantee of charges. 'How much evidence is enough?' asked one member of Grenfell Next of Kin after receiving the letter informing families of the plan to build a full-scale replica of part of the high-rise block.
Given the evidence already assembled in the warehouse, and the 152million documents and files the Met has amassed, not to mention the £100million spent on the investigation, it's a pertinent question.
