Talk is cheap. When will we see meaningful action over Grenfell?

“Incompetence”, “systematic dishonesty” and “systematic shortcomings” are just some of the shaming phrases that leap out from the scathing second and final report into the Grenfell Tower fire published this week (4 September).

Following its publication, there was plenty of self-flagellation, handwringing and remorse from government, the London Fire Brigade and other implicated organisations, with PM Keir Starmer pledging to ensure people’s right to “safe and decent home” was never again “undermined by the reckless pursuit of greed”.

But talk is cheap. The families of the 72 innocent people who lost their lives on 14 June 2017 deserve action as well as words – as does everyone else living in a building with unsafe cladding seven years on from a tragedy everyone agrees was avoidable – and they deserve it now.

The depressing reality is that they are not going to get action – or justice – now or any time soon. The government said it could take up to six months to respond in full to the 58 recommendations in the report, while the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has confirmed it is not likely to decide whether to charge anyone over Grenfell until the end of 2026 given the “sheer volume of evidence and complexity of the investigation”.

That means they might have to wait until 2027 – 10 years after the fire – before anyone starts to be held to account. In the meantime, the culpable parties will continue to go about their business, there will be more fires like the one in Dagenham last week and residents will continue to be trapped in dangerous flats they can’t sell because they are uninsurable.

There will also, no doubt, be more dissembling and deflecting from those named and shamed in the report as they attempt to mitigate or deny responsibility.

It was notable how lacking in remorse some companies were. While Kingspan, which supplied insulation, showed a degree of contrition when it “acknowledged the wholly unacceptable historical failings that occurred in part of our UK insulation business”, it maintained that these were “not causative of the tragedy”. Fellow insulation supplier Celotex said it had “reviewed and improved” its processes but insisted that its cladding system had “met the relevant safety criteria” and Arconic, which supplied the cladding, roundly rejected “any claim” its subsidiary had “sold an unsafe product” or concealed information from or misled anyone.

Expect more of those in the firing line to issue staunch denials in the coming days and weeks. Studio E, Exova, Rydon, Harley and RBKC Building Control all came in for heavy criticism in the report, as did the tower’s landlord the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation. Others caught in “The Grenfell web of blame” included the BBA, CSTB, BRE and NHBC.

Because there are so many implicated, it is going to take time to hold everyone to account. However, barring them from public works won’t prevent another Grenfell. This is a hugely complex situation that involved systematic failures – decades of them – and multiple mitigating circumstances, not least the hot dry weather that fateful day. Only through regulatory reform and wholesale changes in the construction and built environment industry can these systematic issues be addressed.

The hope is that the report lays the foundations for the required regulatory and industry reform. In the meantime, as Starmer noted, the remediation of buildings with unsafe cladding has been way “too slow” and needs to speed up. He warned that the government would force freeholders to assess buildings and enter remediation schemes within set timetables, with a legal requirement to force action “if that is what it takes”.

The threat should not be taken lightly. The word “avoidable” has been used repeatedly this week and the government will not want another avoidable tragedy on its watch.

The shameful truth is that Grenfell would never have happened had the lessons from earlier fires been learned. Those lessons – and the lessons from Grenfell – need to be learned, and quickly. The industry must stop being complicit, accept responsibility and act now. Only then will this be the watershed moment for building safety it should be.