By Danielle Aumord

It’s been revealed, at the Grenfell public inquiry, that letters were sent to central government and the Conservative Party by the London Fire Brigade (LFB) just weeks before the fire at Grenfell.

The letters, shown to the inquiry, were sent to the then housing minister, Gavin Barwell, in April 2017 and were signed by Dany Cotton, the then LFB commissioner, and highlighted concerns within the fire brigade about compartmentation in some residential blocks of flats (their ability to contain fire within a single flat or compartment).

The fire brigade had become aware of blocks with ‘significant compartmentation deficiencies.’ Effective compartmentation is critical to protecting both residents and firefighters ‘from unseen or unusual fire spread’.

But the former commissioner accepted that the fire brigade was also ‘forewarned’ about the fire risk from external cladding and ‘failed to implement’ national guidance on it.

Dany Cotton’s took the top role at the LBF in January 2017 on an interim basis; her first full day as commissioner was actually the same day as the Grenfell fire.

Ms Cotton told the inquiry that claims about improvements to training made by LFB officers to the body overseeing its response to the Lakanal House fire were ‘overstated and misleading.’

Seven areas of training that required improvement for incident commanders were identified within a coroner’s inquest into the six deaths at the Lakanal House fire in 2009.

The provision of training to fire brigade staff was outsourced to provider Babcock in 2012, amid a privatisation drive. But witnesses to the Grenfell public inquiry have previously said that the lack of subject matter experts at Babcock hindered the development of training.

Ms Cotton was grilled on why the training was not provided internally instead, through the department she was running at the time, which took responsibility for incident operations.

‘I would love to have done. Unfortunately…the outsourcing contract did not provide for London Fire Brigade to conduct its own training,’ she responded. ‘We had disbanded the training department as part of the outsourcing of the contract. My team would simply not have been able to do that given the size of the team and the amount of other work requirements.’

She told the public inquiry that the development of the training package was ‘so frustratingly slow’ because of the struggles to find the necessary expertise. ‘I don’t think anyone anticipated the huge impact and delays it would bring by having an external training provider.’

The LFB’s control room – both before and after the fire – was further examined. Former LFB senior operations manager, Joanne Smith, was asked about the brigade’s efforts to reform training on ‘fire survival guidance’ – the advice given to callers who do not believe they can escape a burning building – after the Lakanal House fire in 2009.

She said that a lack of ‘resources’ and major IT problems in the mid-2010s hindered the fire brigade’s effort to train staff on taking calls from residents trapped in burning buildings.

The Lakanal House fire – which killed six people, all of whom were advised by LFB staff to stay put – triggered an effort to improve training for the operators taking such calls.

Ms Smith accepted that this new training didn’t pick up on the issues identified at Lakanal, was never properly implemented, and was watered down as the brigade wrestled with limited resources and IT struggles.

‘Serious shortcomings’ were also found in the advice given to trapped callers on the night of the Grenfell fire. Many residents who were told to stay put despite being seriously affected by both the smoke from the blaze and the fire itself later died.

Alongside a colleague, Ms Smith made the decision to start telling callers at Grenfell to get out of the building at 2.35am.

The inquiry heard about offers of reassurance of rescue by firefighters – the consequences of which were that trapped residents were ‘lulled into a false sense of security.’

A failure to react effectively to the fire conditions were also described. The LFB has come under severe criticism for not learning lessons from the very similar problems that occurred at the Lakanal House fire, with the brigade’s internal investigations and a coroner’s inquest emphasising the need for change.

The inquiry has called these failings ‘systematic in nature.’