Grenfell Inquiry web of blame

The web of blame refers to a piece of evidence which was submitted during the Grenfell Inquiry as part of Counsel to the Inquiry's Closing Presentation on November 22, 2024. The council submitted a 16 page document describing the relationships between key parties involved in the Grenfell tower refurbishment project, with each diagram describing relationships from the perspective of each of the individual parties listed below. The written transcript of the inquiry notes: "Many questions were asked of many witnesses for hundreds of days. One question remains: who among the core participants has actually admitted that they caused or contributed materially to these deaths? That may be one question too many and too much to expect. Humankind cannot bear very much reality. But in the absence of an answer, the focus of my closing is to map out for you who blames whom and for what, and there are three reasons for doing that: legal , cultural and moral":

List of parties noted individually in the Grenfell Inquiry web of blame:

• Arconic
• Celotex
• Kingspan
• Harley Facades
• Rydon
• Studio E
• Exova
• The TMO
• RBKC
• DCLG
• BBA
• BRE

The inquiry also noted on November 22, 2024

"Now, at this point it might be useful to show you what all of these different little maps of blame look like when merged. It looks like that. (Indicated). That is the web of pointer and counte rpointer, who blames whom and, I’ve explained, for what.

You will note that on that map there are a number of core participants not covered. That is because I’m not going to cover NHBC, Siderise, PSB, Max Fordham, JS Wright or the other core participants who have made closing submissions. That does not diminish the importance of their roles, but I’m not sure that public understanding of causation and culpability will be improved by close analysis of their positions about culpability by me here and a further obscuration of what is already a complex picture. Nor am I proposing to cover the LFB. The LFB have not generally sought to shuffle off responsibility onto others, other than perhaps central government, and particularly in respect of the commissioners’ and senior fire safety officers ’ warnings to central government even before Lakanal, and certainly afterwards, about the dangers of tall building fire and smoke spread, its influence on evacuation and stay put, and on the ambit of the Fire Safety Order. All of that is the subject of detailed evidence from Modules 5 and Module 6 part 1, which defies simple and neutral presentation."