Among the many issues investigated are the management of the building by the Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council and Kensington and Chelsea TMO (which was responsible for the borough's council housing), the responses of the Fire Brigade, other government agencies, deregulation policy, building inspections, adequate budgeting, fire safety systems, the materials used, companies installing, selling and manufacturing the cladding, and failures in communications, advice given or decisions made by office holders.

In April 2023, a group of 22 organisations, including cladding company Arconic, Whirlpool and several government bodies, reached a civil settlement with 900 people affected by the fire.

Dowden had noticed the fire breaching the window and offered to spray it with a covering water jet but Secrett was fearful that the resulting steam would scald the two firefighters about to enter the flat.

The MPS Territorial Support Group was present; besides being a specialist unit for public order policing, they provided riot shields to protect firefighters from falling debris.

At 04:14, police addressed the large crowd of onlookers and urgently instructed them to contact anyone they knew who was trapped in the building—if they were able to reach them via phone or Twitter—to tell them they must try to self-evacuate and not wait for the fire brigade.

[101][102][103][104][105] A later investigation by the BBC's Newsnight programme found no evidence that these survival accounts were credible: neither the Metropolitan Police, London Ambulance Service nor any A&E departments were able to find any record of this happening.

[1] On 19 September 2017, Metropolitan Police Commander Stuart Cundy suggested that the number of dead could be lower than 80 because eight people were being investigated for making fraudulent financial claims for non-existent victims.

[130] In the aftermath of the fire, members of the local community, including a residents' group called Grenfell United,[131][132][133] stated that the official figures were far short of existing estimates, with some believing that the death toll was "in hundreds".

[144] In July 2017, NHS England issued an open letter to GPs giving advice on symptoms for mental health conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that those affected by this fire (or recent terrorism) may be experiencing.

[146] The Metropolitan Police Service assigned 250 detectives to the fire, placing additional workload and personal stress on a force that was also investigating recent terrorist incidents, including the London Bridge and Finsbury Park attacks.

[114] On 21 September 2018, the coroner, Fiona Wilcox, expressed concern for the long-term physical health of victims and emergency service workers exposed to smoke and dust inhaled during the fire and subsequent cleanup.

In her letter to NHS chief executive Simon Stevens, Wilcox notes that firefighters involved in the 11 September attacks suffered significant health problems from smoke inhalation.

[162][161]: 71–73 [163] In particular, he identified at least one instance[161]: 82  where wires in the compartment housing the compressor's relays were not crimped tightly enough to an electrical connector to form a connection that could handle the current flow.

In June 2017, it was stated the project team chose cheaper cladding that saved £293,368, after the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation mentioned in an email the need for "good costs for Cllr Feilding-Mellen [the council's former deputy leader]".

[187] Similar cladding containing highly flammable insulation material is believed to have been installed on thousands of other high-rise buildings in countries including Britain, France, the UAE and Australia.

"[194] On 31 July 2017, the department released results of fire safety testing on the cladding panels used at Grenfell Tower, which were carried out by the Building Research Establishment and assigned the polyethylene filling a category three rating, designating a total lack of flame retardant properties.

[196] According to US-based Arconic, the polyethylene version of the material is banned in the United States for use in buildings exceeding 40 ft (12 m) in height, because of the risk of spreading fire and smoke.

[35][207] PIR insulation foams "will, when ignited, burn rapidly and produce intense heat, dense smoke and gases which are irritating, flammable and/or toxic", among them carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide.

Broader political criticism was also directed at British society, including condemnation of the response by governmental bodies and UK politicians, social divisions, deregulation issues, and poor transparency overall.

[218] The two main aims of the review are firstly to develop improved building regulations for the future, with a focus on residential high-rise blocks, and secondly to provide reassurance to residents that their homes are safe.

[224] In October 2018, the government announced plans to ban flammable cladding on newly built buildings that were over 18 m (59 ft), as well as for those of certain types such as schools, care homes and student housing.

[226] By February 2021, the government had pledged somewhat over £5 billion towards the remediation of fire safety problems—a figure that still fell far short of the costs involved, many of which were being borne by owners of flats who had bought them in the belief that they had been built legally.

[253][254] For such a charge the prosecution must show sufficient evidence to pass a four-stage "Adomako Test" proving a reprehensible breach of duty of care which caused or contributed to the victims' death.

[260] On 19 September 2017, Commander Stuart Cundy briefed that eight people were being investigated for allegedly making false claims to financial support in the name of fictitious victims.

A woman who pretended to be a Grenfell victim was found to have made more than fifty false claims to insurers and to have also said she was present at the Manchester Arena bombing and the London Bridge attack just weeks earlier.

Council opposition leader Robert Atkinson, structural engineer Paul Follows and building inspector Geoff Wilkinson all expressed shock that the fire had happened given prior consultation with LFB.

He praised the "courage and devotion to duty" of the firefighters but argued LFB suffered from "significant systemic failings" and that incident commanders were not trained to deal with a failure of compartmentation of this scale.

[280] The EHRC report expressed particular concern around the placing of disabled people, including wheelchair users, on upper storeys of tower blocks without any consideration about how they could escape in a fire or other emergency.

[286] According to its US corporate filings, as of November 2019, Arconic had already spent approximately £30 million on lawyers and advisers to respond to all the criminal and civil investigations, inquiries, and litigation arising out of the fire.

[291] Represented by a group of fourteen law firms, claims were initially brought in the English High Court and were then later moved to alternative dispute resolution (specifically, mediation before Lord Neuberger).