The Metropolitan Police has handed prosecutors the full criminal evidence against 20 companies and organisations and 54 individuals over the Grenfell Tower fire, a milestone moment nine years after the blaze killed 72 people.
Detectives passed 12,600 pages of evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service on Wednesday, asking prosecutors to decide whether charges should be brought — and against whom — in connection with the June 2017 disaster in North Kensington.
The potential offences under consideration span corporate manslaughter, gross negligence manslaughter, health and safety breaches, fraud and misconduct in public office, reflecting the breadth of an investigation the Met describes as one of the largest ever undertaken by any UK police force.
Scale of the investigation
A dedicated team of 220 investigators has spent nine years building the case. Detectives have examined more than 15,000 people and 700 organisations, taken 14,700 statements and gathered over 27,000 exhibits — including cladding panels, insulation, doors and windows recovered from the tower.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Kevin Southworth called the handover “a milestone moment in the police investigation into this devastating tragedy which took the lives of 72 people”.
“Our dedicated team of 220 investigators has worked incredibly hard to honour our commitment to the bereaved, survivors, residents and all those affected by the fire to meet this timescale,” he said.
“We appreciate, of course, it has taken nine years to get to this point. As we have said before, this is one of the most complex investigations ever undertaken by any UK law enforcement agency – the scale is truly enormous.”
He added that the painstaking pace had been necessary “to ensure our investigation is meticulous and presents the very best possible evidence to the CPS for charging decisions”.
What happens next
The CPS will now work through the evidence files and decide whether anyone faces prosecution. Prosecutors have previously said charging decisions will be made before the tenth anniversary of the fire, which falls on 14 June 2027 — giving them a little over eight months.
Even after any charging decision, the road ahead is likely to be long: cases of this scale typically involve months of preparation before a trial can be listed, and any trial over the fire would be one of the most significant criminal proceedings in modern British history. The Met stressed that enquiries remain ongoing while prosecutors consider the files.
Nine years on
The fire in the early hours of 14 June 2017 swept through the 24-storey tower in under an hour, killing 72 residents and leaving hundreds homeless. A public inquiry later found that the combustible cladding system fitted to the building during refurbishment was the principal cause of the rapid spread — findings that echo continuing concerns about building safety across London’s tower blocks.
The long road to this week’s milestone has run through years of parallel processes. The inquiry’s first phase report, published in October 2019, examined how the fire started and how emergency services responded that night. Its second and final phase report, released in September 2024, delivered a sweeping verdict on the decades of failures — by government, regulators, builders and materials manufacturers — that left the tower wrapped in flammable cladding.
Civil claims and compensation settlements have followed, and the police investigation has quietly continued behind it all, with detectives interviewing witnesses and seizing documents across the construction and refurbishment industry.
For those who lost loved ones in North Kensington that night, the wait for answers has now entered its ninth year — and the CPS’s decision, due before the tenth anniversary, will be the next defining moment.
