The big issue: let’s take all precautions… but also wait for the facts of the fire

The fire at Grenfell Tower has brought devastation to a community that has found itself in the midst of unimaginable horror.

In the most difficult of circumstances, our firefighters and all of our emergency services have displayed unwavering bravery and professionalism. Over the last few days, as chair of London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, I have been extraordinarily impressed by, and grateful for, their outstanding work.

Commentators have a responsibility now not to speculate about causes without knowing the facts. We have to leave it to the experts to work calmly and methodically to investigate what happened and why this horrific fire behaved as it did.

It is vital that we ensure that nothing like this ever, ever happens again. We must get answers and changes must be made – and as quickly as possible – but the government must make sure any changes to policy, regulations or practices are based on facts.
Dr Fiona Twycross
Chair of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority

I worked for the London Fire Brigade during the 1980s, and after the King’s Cross Underground Fire I saw photographs that were too horrific to be released that remain indelibly printed on my mind.

Let us hope that all of those involved in the delaying and obfuscation that undermined any improvement in fire safety and building safety regulations are now thoroughly examining their consciences. Just to help them, it should be mandatory for all MPs, former MPs now in other positions with government, and former MPs now ennobled to view the video footage and photographs that the LFB and others will have taken during and after the incident.

When they see the reality of what fire does to a human being caught up in a conflagration, it may just prompt them to accept that everything must be done, irrespective of costs, to prevent another tragedy like Grenfell Tower.
Paul F Faupel
Somersham
Cambridgeshire

Ed Vulliamy paints a nostalgic picture of a harmonious Notting Hill with a special melange (“Apartheid London: how social cleansing ruined the vibrant streets I grew up in”, News, last week). The special melange has not gone but Notting Hill has always been home to a broad spectrum of wealth and good or bad fortune.

The area was hardly a picture of income equality when Alan Johnson lived in poverty down the road from the stucco-fronted houses (where Ed Vulliamy was born if, as he says, he arrived in this world on the street on which Jimi Hendrix would die) where his mother worked.

When I arrived from the Peckham/Camberwell border in 1992, I came because I thought Notting Hill was vibrant and exciting, but also a bit posh and safe compared to Camberwell. The houses were ludicrously expensive then. Since 1992 things have changed but no more (and probably less so) than in other areas of London.

The terrible, terrible tragedy of Grenfell Tower has, if anything, brought the community together rather than accentuating our differences. Talk of apartheid is wrong and damaging.
Chris Williams
London W11

Mrs May calls the fire at Grenfell Tower “an unimaginable tragedy” (“Support on the ground for families was ‘not good enough’, says May”, News, last week). But it had been imagined by residents and by fire experts. It was the politicians whose imaginations failed them.
Pippa Goodhart
Cambridge