Met Police to probe fire service over Grenfell ‘stay put’ request

The Metropolitan Police has announced that it will investigate London Fire Brigade’s use of a ‘stay put’ policy during the Grenfell Tower fire.

The advice to residents was that they were safer remaining in their flats while the fire services tackled the fire in the early hours of June 16, 2017.

Fire-safety Engineer Barbara Lane said that advice had “effectively failed” within 40 minutes of it being issued, but the residents of the tower were not told to evacuate for more than an hour after that.

At that stage, 187 people had managed to escape the fire, but 107 remained inside – 71 of which are now known to have died in the tragedy.

Barbara Lane’s report went on to say that there was “an early need for total evacuation”.

Met Police Commander Stuart Cundy said: “It’s an absolute obligation on us to be looking at the most serious potential criminal offences that may have been committed.”

Stephen Walsh, speaking on behalf of the London Fire Brigade, countered by saying that there was a “fundamental misunderstanding” that fire commanders could change policy at any time when the building was not designed for a simultaneous evacuation.

“If there is no policy applied by the building owner which provides for a policy of simultaneous evacuation and there are no evacuation plans and there are no general fire alarms – what is an incident commander on the fire ground to do?” he asked.

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