Legal bills relating to the Grenfell Tower fire are on course to top a quarter of a billion pounds, according to figures obtained by the Guardian on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the disaster.
The public inquiry into the causes of the fire that killed 72 people in the west London tower block has spent £149m so far with more than £60m going to lawyers working for the core participants, the inquiry revealed on Thursday.
The London fire brigade has spent an additional £13m, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is forecast to have spent £10m and Arconic, the company that made the combustible cladding sheets that were the main cause of the spread of fire, has reported £55m in legal and professional fees expended in its defence.
The costs, which are likely to be higher still when spending by other companies implicated in the disaster is accounted for, dwarf the £293,000 that the inquiry heard was saved on the refurbishment project when non-combustible zinc panels were swapped for plastic-filled aluminium composite material that burned like petrol.
On Tuesday hundreds of bereaved and survivors are due to gather at Westminster Abbey and at the base of the burnt-out tower in the north of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea for memorial services to remember those who died when the 24-storey block was engulfed in flames sparked by a faulty fridge in the early hours of 14 June 2017. It will be followed by a silent walk through the streets around the tower.
The public inquiry has been running for more than four years and while hearings are due to conclude in July, its chair, Sir Martin Moore-Bick, is not expected to deliver his final report until 2023. Scotland Yard detectives investigating possible crimes including corporate manslaughter, gross negligence manslaughter and health and safety crimes have yet to make any significant arrests. They are awaiting the outcome of the public inquiry before deciding whether to recommend prosecutions, which means any trials could start as late as 2024.
Twenty-four firms of solicitors have been receiving public funding to represent core participants, most of whom are survivors and the bereaved. Public funds are being used to pay for 13 barristers, including five QCs, and 132 other fee earners. Their fees are currently running at a cost to the taxpayer of £43,000 for every working day. Moore-Bick, a retired appeal court judge, earns £210,000-£220,000 a year, while the inquiry’s own legal team and panel of experts has so far cost over £23m.
There has been frustration that one key recommendation already made by the inquiry has been rejected by the government.
Last month ministers rejected Moore-Bick’s call for all disabled tenants to be given a personal evacuation plan in the event of a fire, angering survivors and disability campaigners.
Fifteen of 37 disabled residents perished in the 2017 fire and the inquiry recommended in October 2019 that the “owner and manager of every high-rise residential building be required by law to prepare personal emergency evacuation plans [Peeps] for all residents whose ability to self-evacuate may be compromised (such as persons with reduced mobility or cognition)”.
But the Home Office said it had decided it was not proportionate or practical to introduce the plan, citing problems such as the costs to landlords.
