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Disabled People’s Organisations call for action following GTI Phase 2 report and pledges by Prime Minister and Building Safety Minister

A coalition of organisations and specialists supporting Disabled people have published a Statement laying out the urgent action required to protect Disabled residents following publication of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry (GTI) Phase 2 Report. The Report found that Disabled people were particularly affected by the Grenfell Fire, which killed close to half of the Tower’s Disabled residents. They called for immediate action on the Prime Minister’s commitment to Parliament, in response to the Phase 2 report, to implement the GTI’s Phase 1 recommendation on Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans (PEEPs) to protect Disabled residents. The coalition have now published their further Response to the Building Safety Minister’s follow up statement to Parliament regarding PEEPs and engagement with Disabled People’s Organisations on fire safety.

The coalition includes Disability Rights UK, the Spinal Injuries Association, Inclusion London, Claddag (the Leaseholder Disability Action Group), and other Disabled people’s and specialist organisations such as Triple A Consulting. They are advised by Mark Henderson. He also acts for one of the two core participant groups of bereaved, survivors, and residents in Phase 2 of the GTI, leading on disability issues.

The coalition’s Statement welcomed the commitment to the House of Commons by the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer MP that the new Government will finally address the GTI’s Phase 1 recommendation “that the owner and manager of every high-rise residential building be required by law to prepare [PEEPs] for all residents whose ability to escape may be compromised, such as persons with reduced mobility or cognition”. 

In response, the coalition identified a single regulatory amendment (see below) that could be made now in order to implement the PEEPs recommendation, although further detailed proposals on fire safety must not become grounds for delay. They added that:

Shamefully, GTI’s recommendation has gone unimplemented for almost five years, undermining existing duties under equality, human rights, and fire safety legislation. There has already been consultation and previous administrations have kicked the can down the road long enough.

The Building Safety Minister Rushanara Ali MP has now told the House of Commons that regulations for PEEPs in residential blocks will be introduced as soon as possible. In the coalition’s further Response to the Minister, they emphasise that: 

The Government now has the opportunity to take action without delay to respect the rights and safety of Disabled people in their homes by implementing the single regulatory amendment for which we call. We urge the Government to turn the page and do so by 19 October 2024, the 5th anniversary of the GTI making the recommendation. 

The Statement on PEEPs

The coalition’s original Statement observed that:

The [GTI Phase 2] Report found that “RBKC and the TMO were jointly responsible for the management of fire safety at Grenfell Tower. The years between 2009 and 2017 were marked by a persistent indifference to fire safety, particularly the safety of vulnerable people.” It concluded that “On any view, the Grenfell Tower fire revealed the importance of ensuring that the responsible person collects sufficient information about any vulnerable occupants to enable PEEPs to be prepared, when appropriate, and, in the event of a fire, appropriate measures to be taken to assist their escape. The TMO’s failure to collect such information illustrates a basic neglect of its obligations in relation to fire safety”.

The Statement concluded:

As GTI’s Report shows, close to half (43.25%) of Disabled adults present in Grenfell Tower on the night of the fire were killed. None of them had been provided with a PEEP. … Only by imposing this duty into regulations in black and white, without delay, will the Government meet the urgency and seriousness of the situation where the Prime Minister said [responding to the Phase 2 report in the House of Commons on 4 September 2024] that Disabled people “are housed in circumstances in which they clearly need an evacuation plan”.

…. The consequences of expecting Disabled people to depend on rescue by the Fire and Rescue Service were illustrated by the evidence in the GTI of Mariko Toyoshima-Lewis, a resident of the Tower and wheelchair user. On the night of the fire, she told her family to go without her. She remained, thinking she would die, until being dragged downstairs by fire fighters in a last minute, terrifying, and painful rescue. That was not some aberration. That disabled people should be left behind to hope for FRS rescue was what the last government expressly advocated in its rejection of the Phase 1 PEEPs recommendation. Disabled residents must be entitled to equal treatment, including the right to evacuate alongside nondisabled residents and not be left behind.

Working with Disabled people and organisations

The coalition called for future fire safety measures for Disabled residents to be developed collaboratively with Disabled representatives from the outset, stating that “By committing to collaborating with Disabled people on all further proposals, the Government can stand against the neglect, indifference, and discrimination of the past” (in which regard they pointed to the GTI Phase 2 Report findings discussed below).

The Building Safety Minister has now pledged in her speech to the House of Commons that “The Government will engage with representative groups as these plans are developed”.  

In their Response to the Minister, the coalition have welcomed this pledge, stating that:

It answers the call in our statement, and we stand ready to start working with the Government immediately to develop further proposals on fire safety including fire risk assessments. However, such work must not come at the cost of delaying implementing the express right of Disabled residents to a PEEP. 

The call to action

The coalition’s Statement called for action to secure the safety and equality of Disabled residents, to confront the indifference which led to so many dying in Grenfell Tower, and to tackle the discrimination that continues to put their lives at risk:

  • On PEEPs, the Government must “take immediate steps to amend the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 to impose a clear and specific duty on responsible persons (owners or managers) to prepare a PEEP for anyone who needs support, assistance or aids in order to evacuate to a place of safety in case of fire. Responsible persons must use best endeavours to ensure that PEEPs are drawn up for anyone who needs them, including surveying their residents to ensure that no one is excluded”.

  • The Government must implement the GTI’s “urgent” Phase 2 recommendation to review the “essentially arbitrary” height based definition of ‘higher-risk’ buildings so that it focuses on “its use and, in particular, the likely presence of vulnerable people, for whom evacuation in the event of a fire or other emergency would be likely to present difficulty”. It should further extend the requirement for PEEPs to all residential blocks covered by the Fire Safety Order that house Disabled people.

  • The Government must implement recommendations that fire safety strategy must foreground Disabled residents by focussing on the time required for Disabled as well as nondisabled residents to evacuate. The Phase 2 Report states that: “Calculating the likely rate of fire spread and the time required for evacuation, including the evacuation of those with physical or mental impairments… ought to form an essential part of any fire safety strategy” and recommended that “it be made a statutory requirement that a fire safety strategy …  be submitted with building control applications [which] must take into account the needs of vulnerable people, including the additional time they may require to leave the building or reach a place of safety within it and any additional facilities necessary to ensure their safety”.

  • The Government must strengthen legal duties to make housing accessible, including introducing a legal requirement that 10% of new housing (blocks and single units) be built to wheelchair accessible standards (M4(3)).

  • The Government must require inclusive engagement and consultation with Disabled residents over their building’s safety and repair issues.

  • The Government must ensure Disabled residents receive comprehensive support during building remediation.

GTI findings on the failure to consult Disabled people, specialists and organisations

The GTI’s Phase 2 Report lays bare the persistent discrimination, disregard, and indifference which led to guidance being given under the responsible department’s auspices to the effect that landlords need not plan for the evacuation of their Disabled residents. The repeated failure to include representatives of Disabled people in the groups developing the policy or consult them was an “oversight” by the Government. This lack of evidence of any consideration meant that the GTI had to conclude that it was “plain” from the published guidance that the Chief Fire Officers Association’s position “that not to include advice on the evacuation of disabled people was a fundamental error” had been “considered and rejected or simply ignored”.

A fire safety and disability specialist told the Government that guidance that landlords need not have plans for how to evacuate Disabled residents “encouraged readers to ignore the Fire Safety Order and to breach international and domestic law on equality and fire safety and to breach international and domestic law on fire safety [and] reflected an outdated viewpoint, and was discriminatory”. However, the Government sought no advice on whether this “allegation of unlawful discrimination was well-founded or not” and “The response of the department …  was wholly unsatisfactory; it was, in effect, simply brushed aside.”

When the Department received an internal report warning that the published guidance represented “a failure of the government to understand that disabled people could not escape from flats without help in the event of a fire and that more guidance was needed on the provision of PEEPs for residents known to have difficulty escaping or to be unable to escape … blocks of flats without assistance”, the Government neither disclosed the internal report nor responded to it. The GTI found that the Government “considered it too difficult to find a solution to the problem posed by vulnerable persons who could not escape from purpose-built general needs blocks of flats without assistance”.

The Disability Rights UK news stories are here and here.

The original Statement following the GTI’s Report and the Prime Minister’s commitment is here in PDF and Word.

The further Response to the Building Safety Minister is here in PDF and Word.