Police under pressure in wake of inquiry into Grenfell fire

Police are under pressure to accelerate the criminal investigation into the Grenfell Tower fire after an excoriating report found companies operated with "systematic dishonesty" and that all 72 deaths were avoidable.

- Robert Booth and Emine Sinmaz

A seven-year public inquiry culminated last Wednesday in a report that laid bare "decades of failure" by central government and egregious behaviour by a string of multimilliondollar firms involved in the tower's disastrous refurbishment.

Sir Martin Moore-Bick, who led the inquiry, found that firms that made the combustible materials used on the tower-Arconic, Celotex and Kingspan -"engaged in deliberate and sustained strategies to ... mislead the market".

He identified incompetence, "cavalier" attitudes and "concealment" of wrongdoing, while Grenfell residents' safety concerns were dismissed by their local authority and the landlord.

After the publication of the longawaited findings, Natasha Elcock, the chair of the families' group Grenfell United, sent a message to the Metropolitan police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), saying: "It is now on to you to deliver justice."

Speaking in the Commons, the prime minister, Keir Starmer, issued "an apology on behalf of the British state" and said the report had prompted "a renewed determination to ensure that justice is delivered". He pledged to "give all support and resource that's necessary".

The London mayor, Sadiq Khan, said: "Those responsible must now be immediately held to account," while the local MP, Joe Powell, said with "no charges and no arrests... the government and the police must now do everything in their power to bring those responsible to justice using the full force of the law".