Exclusive: Costs now 4,000 times amount saved by replacing fire-retardant materials with combustible cladding
The financial cost of the Grenfell Tower disaster has reached nearly £1.2bn – 4,000 times the amount that was saved by replacing fire-retardant cladding with a cheaper combustible alternative during the disastrous refurbishment.
The bulk of the cost is being met from the public purse, dwarfing the compensation to bereaved and survivors paid by companies involved in wrapping the west London council’s block in combustible materials before the fire in June 2017 that killed 72 people.
£481m has been spent or budgeted for its Grenfell response by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, which owned the tower and authorised cost-cutting decisions that contributed to the scale of the disaster. A large part of this was required to buy new homes for survivors.
£291m has been allocated by central government for costs associated with its ownership of the site, which will become a memorial.
The public inquiry and police investigation, neither of which have yet concluded, have so far cost a combined £231m.
Arconic, which made the combustible cladding, has spent £35m on lawyers and other advisers, and it recorded a liability of £47m in its accounts for settling civil claims.
Close to 900 bereaved and survivors have so far received £150m in compensation through civil court proceedings, a figure confirmed in the latest annual accounts of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
