Comment: ‘the past six years has shown we cannot rely on goodwill - we must force through Grenfell change’

It is six years since the Grenfell Tower fire that killed 72 people exposed the serious failings in UK building safety.

Given the horror of that night and the role the building’s cladding and insulation played in the fire’s terrifying spread, it would be reasonable to imagine that immediate steps would have been taken to remedy the situation on the thousands of buildings where similar products had been used.

When cladding tests started to show up other safety defects on buildings throughout the country — faulty fire doors, inadequate compartmentalisation and more — a huge, national remediation effort should have kicked in immediately.

Hundreds of thousands of people live and sleep in these structures.

Instead, we have witnessed companies and individuals split hairs, quibble over terminology and shirk responsibility – on a monumental scale.

It took until last year to force developers to fix “life-critical fire-safety issues” on their own buildings in order to be allowed to build new ones. Most major players have now signed the legally binding pledge) but exceptions remain.

Shockingly, an investigation by Inside Housing published yesterday discovered that the vast majority of older high-rise social housing tower blocks still lack fire alarm systems and sprinklers.

These are required in new builds but not older ones, despite the Grenfell Tower Inquiry’s recommendation to retrofit them everywhere.

Meanwhile, thousands of leaseholders are still living in unsellable homes with serious safety issues, many of them families stuck in starter flats never meant to be forever homes.