Grenfell: A Tragedy We Should Never Forget

Grenfell Tower, London

The new Netflix film about Grenfell is powerful, painful and necessary viewing.

For those of us in the fire safety industry, it’s not just another documentary. It’s a reminder of everything that can go wrong when safety isn’t prioritised.

Grenfell exposed deep failures in regulation, communication and accountability. But it also highlighted something critical that’s often overlooked: the importance of passive fire protection.

Fire-stopping. Compartmentation. Properly fitted and maintained fire doors. These systems work silently in the background, but when a fire breaks out, they are often the difference between people getting out safely or not.

In the immediate aftermath of Grenfell, there were political promises and regulatory changes. The Building Safety Act followed. But several years on, we’re still not where we should be.

Thousands of buildings remain non-compliant. Too many safety systems are out of date, poorly maintained or missing altogether. And for all the lessons we said we’d learned, much of the urgency has faded.

Passive fire protection isn’t just about meeting legal obligations. It’s about protecting lives. Making sure that, in the worst-case scenario, people have a chance to escape. And making sure duty holders can look their residents in the eye and say, “You’re safe here.”

We can’t rewrite what happened at Grenfell. But we can make sure it’s never allowed to happen again.

That starts by remembering what we promised. And making sure those lessons stay at the heart of how we build and maintain the spaces people live, work and sleep in.