Compliance, Criminality, and Climate Change Policy in the Grenfell Tower Fire

Abstract

Though the Report of Phase 2 the Grenfell Tower Inquiry is critical of many involved in the Grenfell Tower fire, its criticism of regulatory non-compliance by the manufacturers of the products used in the cladding of the Tower has been of a severity which has led to a general public call for some of those manufacturers and their employees to be prosecuted for the most serious criminal offences. This justification of this severity is, however, undermined by the Inquiry ’s analysis of the manufacturers’ conduct being seriously inadequate in terms of regulatory theory and practice. Differing forms of non-compliance are insufficiently distinguished, and the Inquiry’s criticism of private companies is not at all balanced by its criticism of public bodies. But it was public bodies which failed in their specific regulatory duties, and, in pursuit of climate change policies, gave the general impetus to the cladding of the Grenfell Tower which was the cause of the fire.