Amy Clarke,Londonand
Tom Symonds,New Scotland Yard
Rex Features
The Metropolitan Police will ask the Crown Prosecution Service to consider charging up to 57 individuals and 20 companies over the Grenfell Tower fire disaster.
In an update at New Scotland Yard, the force said it would submit evidence files to the CPS by the end of September this year.
A final decision on whether to bring charges could take until June 2027 – 10 years after the fire in west London, which killed 72 people. If the CPS does decide to prosecute, any trials are unlikely to begin before 2029.
A spokesman for Grenfell United, which represents some of the bereaved families and survivors, said the development was “an important step in a process that has already taken far too long”.
The Grenfell Tower fire was caused by a chain of failures by governments, “dishonest” companies and shortcomings in the fire service, a public inquiry found.
Operation Northleigh, the £150m probe into the disaster of 14 June 2017, has examined the actions of 15,000 people across 700 organisations in the largest and most complex investigation ever carried out by the Met Police.
Grenfell United called for no further delay to proceedings and said those responsible must be held to account.
The group said: “For our community, this is not news we meet with celebration. We meet it with caution, grief and determination. We have waited almost a decade for accountability.”
It added that the Ministry of Justice and the government must ensure the courts are properly resourced so any prosecutions linked to Grenfell can be heard swiftly.
