The Chair welcomed the 4 speakers to the meeting – Commissioner Andy Roe London Fire Brigade, Assistant Commissioner Andy Bell London Fire Brigade, Fiona Twycross AM Deputy Mayor for Fire & Resilience London Assembly and Roy Wilsher Chair NFCC.

Grenfell Tower Major Incident – Andy Bell

Andy Bell described his role heading up the Grenfell Tower Investigation and Review Team. He said that the LFB was fully committed to the Duty of Candour by supporting the Inquiry and the criminal investigation by providing documents, information and witnesses. He talked about the scale of the commitment from LFB in providing this support, including providing over 70,000 documents to the GTI, 710 voluntary witness statements to the Police and a statement and interview under caution.

Andy went on to explain the impact that the Grenfell fire had had on LFB staff. He said that in total, 1074 staff attended the incident over a period of 13 days with 139 needing counselling support for anxiety/depression and PTSD.

Andy then spoke about the GTI’s 46 recommendations and how LFB was responding to them. He said that most of them apply to all FRS’s, not just LFB and that effective implementation would therefore require a national approach which someone would need to coordinate. He said that the LFB accepted all the recommendations. He said that LFB were disappointed that the installation of sprinklers was not included in the recommendations and also, that some of the recommendations did not align with the Hackitt review recommendations.

Andy explained that LFB had been developing a joint action plan to address the recommendations of both the GTI report and the HMICFRS inspection report. He said that many actions were already in progress because of the LFBs own internal report into the Grenfell fire, which had come to similar conclusions. He said that the LFB was now obliged to report on progress against the GTI recommendations to the Home Secretary and London Mayor on a monthly basis. He said that LFB welcomed this additional scrutiny.

Andy concluded by saying that the GTI and HMICFRS recommendations were only part of the story. He said that the LFB recognised that, in order to effectively deliver reform there was a need to address wider systemic failures in the culture of the service and that a new strategy and corporate plan had been developed to help achieve this.

LFB Transformation Plan – Andy Roe

Andy Roe explained that he had been one of the incident commanders on the night of the Grenfell Fire and described some of the shocking scenes that he and his colleagues had witnessed. He said that this devastating chain of events should never be allowed to happen again and that, although LFB weren’t responsible for the fire starting, he recognised the failings that had been flagged up by the GTI and HMICFRS, many of which had been know before this fire.  He went through the Strategic Framework that had been drawn up in order to transform the culture and working practices within LFB post-Grenfell. He explained that behind each of the 4 strategic pillars (“the best people and the best place to work”; “Seizing the future”; “Delivering excellence”; and “Outward facing”) there was a detailed action plan which  ...  view the full minutes text for item 2.

Fire Commission members noted the Building Safety Update.