Government’s rejection of Grenfell Inquiry proposals for disabled residents branded ‘shameful’ and ‘reprehensible’

A spokesperson for Grenfell United said: “We are enraged at the government, whose sole focus continues to be profit and not public safety.

“We’ve fought for years to create a legacy for our 72 loved ones, and to prevent another Grenfell. But five years on, the government has reverted back to the same policy in place before Grenfell. This policy resulted in 41% of those living with disabilities dying at Grenfell.

“It left them with no personal evacuation plan and no means of escape. They didn’t stand a chance. 

“This report is a disgrace. Disabled people have the right to leave their homes safely. Government must implement the recommendation… and ensure personal evacuation plans for disabled residents.”

The group’s criticism was echoed by the LGA, which represents England’s local authorities, which own thousands of tower blocks housing tens of thousands of disabled residents. 

Ian Stephens, chair of its fire services management committee, said: “All residents, including disabled residents, have a right to be safe and to feel safe in their homes. 

“The LGA recognises the practical challenges of delivering PEEPS and has raised these with government. However, it would be completely unacceptable to have a situation where high-risk buildings in which residents who can do so are told to evacuate immediately if there is a fire, but disabled residents are left inside in the hope of rescue by the fire service. 

“We support emergency evacuation information sharing [EEIS] in these buildings as a back-up safety measure, but it cannot be the first option. This is not what the Grenfell Inquiry intended when making its recommendations. We would question its legality and are aware that the fire service also has serious reservations about the practicality of relying on rescue in the first instance.

“The LGA is keen to participate in joint efforts between landlords and representatives of disabled residents to discuss all aspects of PEEPs provision, including, but not limited to, neighbour assistance.”

Andy Roe, commissioner of the London Fire Brigade (LFB) and the incident commander who reversed the stay put advice on the night of the Grenfell Tower fire, said: “It is vitally important that people feel safe in their own homes and have certainty about how to leave their building in the event of a fire or other emergency.

“PEEPs were a key recommendation from the Grenfell Tower Inquiry and we want to work with government, communities and other partners to make progress on evacuation plans. We will be responding to this consultation.”

Sarah Jones, Labour’s shadow minister for the police and fire services, said: “It is shameful that nearly five years after the Grenfell Tower fire, the government has abandoned recommendations from phase one of the Grenfell Inquiry. 

“It is wholly unacceptable that the Home Office has refused to implement the recommendations on evacuation plans to protect disabled people. We urge the government to think again.”

Meanwhile, speaking at the Tall Buildings Fire Safety Conference in east London, Professor Ed Galea, founding director of the Fire Safety Engineering Group (FSEG) at the University of Greenwich in London, the author of more than 300 academic and professional papers and an internationally recognised expert on building evacuation said: “I think it’s shameful the announcements made by government today, absolutely shameful. We’re going to have consultation after consultation until the government gets the answer it wants. 

“It seems as though we as a profession – I mean fire engineers, the authorities, the government – have learned nothing from Grenfell. 

“Grenfell is a story about a failed evacuation. Fire engineers failed by not providing a plan B to stay put. The fire service failed dismally because they did not have a plan B for when the building fails. 

“Our engineers are so arrogant. They think they can devise a perfect or even a near perfect system, that they don’t need a plan B. Stay put is fine as plan A, but you need a plan B and that means for disabled people as well.”

Phil Murphy, a former firefighter and high-rise safety consultant, added: “Stay put is not an evacuation strategy. It never was… To carry on pretending that it works is joke. 78 people [72 at Grenfell, six at Lakanal House in 2009] have died after being told to stay put.”

Paul Bussey, an architect and fire engineer at AHMM, added: “Stay put isn’t an evacuation strategy. That’s [plain] English, isn’t it? It’s a policy that is great as a concept to start with, but there must be a plan B.”

Sarah Rennie, a wheelchair user who lives in a block of flats with dangerous cladding and campaigns for evacuation plans for disabled residents, said: “I’ve always been disabled, and so ever since I was in school, I have experienced the fire alarm blaring and going to sit in a stairwell while everyone around me leaves for safety. As a child and a young person, I accepted it. I thought that was my lot.

“Like disabled people across the country, I sleep feeling anxious, frightened, and today frankly traumatised to read what the government’s written today that it believes everybody’s lives more valuable, because I could get in the way of them getting out.”

Speaking to Inside Housing, Elspeth Grant, a fire evacuation expert, trainer and advisor, said: “Disabled residents in general needs accommodation have yet again been failed by this government. 

“The government proposals highlights the fact that this government is clearly unaware that councils and housing associations are successfully implementing PEEPs across their property portfolios.  Further evidence of just how out of touch this government is with the lives and priorities of 18% of their voters.”

Fazilet Hadi, head of policy at Disability Rights UK, added: “The government’s decision today to reject the need for PEEPs for disabled people who can’t self-evacuate from high-rise buildings is utterly reprehensible and shows that it does not consider our lives to have equal value with non-disabled people.   

“The recommendation that PEEPs be put in place was made by the Grenfell Tower Inquiry in October 2019, following evidence from fire safety experts. Almost 40% of the disabled residents living in the tower died in the fire, and it is highly likely that their lives could have been saved had PEEPs been in place. 

“The Fire Safety Order 2005 makes no distinction in respect of disabled people: we all need to be safe in the event of fire. The Equality Act 2010 requires reasonable adjustments to be made for disabled people. The government’s decision is a dereliction of its duties under the law and fails to uphold our human rights.”

In a document published on Wednesday alongside the decision, the Home Office said it had received 382 responses to the consultation on PEEPs, which ran last summer, as well as two four-hour workshops on the proposals. 

It said the majority of responses – which came from residents groups, the Grenfell community, industry representatives, building owners and other groups – agreed with the need to provide PEEPs in high-rise buildings. 

It said 60% had strongly agreed responsible persons should be required to produce a PEEP, 23% tended to agree and just 8% strongly disagreed.

There was also strong support for central government to provide of a template for how PEEPs should work with 88% of respondents agreeing that this should be done.

It added that 51 written responses had been submitted on the issue of a height threshold, with all of them suggesting that the provision of PEEPs should not be limited to tall buildings only. 

However, it said there were 40 responses which raised “concerns about proportionality and costs”, with “concerns about who would pay if structural changes, such as evacuation lifts, are required for a PEEP”. 

It added that “a number of responses raised issues of proportionality” due to a belief “that Grenfell was a singular tragic event and the potential impact of these proposals were not proportionate to the impact that they would have on the overall fire safety of residents of buildings which primarily had a ‘stay put‘ strategy”.

It did not say how many had expressed this view, which has ultimately been adopted as government policy. 

However, it added that in individual discussions with building owners, they had “cited the impracticality and disproportionality of PEEPs (without having staff on-site to implement them) and their incompatibility with a ‘stay put’ policy building as reasons to focus their resources on an alternative approach”. 

The document said: “It is clear from the quantitative analysis that a large majority of respondents support the proposal to require the responsible person to prepare a PEEP for every resident who self-identifies to them as unable to self-evacuate and do so in consultation with the residents.

“However, it is evident from the consultation responses, workshops and meetings that where individuals and organisations were able to elaborate on their responses, they highlighted significant concerns over the proportionality, the practicality, and the fire safety case for PEEPs in all high-rise residential buildings.”

As a result, the Home Office concluded that the inquiry recommendations “should also not be implemented at this time”.