The Metropolitan Police will ask prosecutors to consider charging up to 57 people and 20 companies over the Grenfell Tower fire, a major step in a criminal case that has moved through years of inquiry and investigation. Officers said they plan to send evidence files to the Crown Prosecution Service by the end of September 2026.
The force said a final decision on whether to bring charges could take until June 2027, and that any trials would be unlikely to start before 2029 if prosecutors decide to proceed. The fire killed 72 people at the west London tower block on 14 June 2017.
The scale of the inquiry underlines how broad the case has become. Operation Northleigh, the £150 million probe into the disaster, has examined the actions of 15,000 people across 700 organisations. The criminal investigation has run alongside a public inquiry that began in 2017 and concluded in 2024.
That inquiry found the fire was caused by a chain of failures involving governments, dishonest companies and shortcomings in the fire service. Police said they waited for those findings before assessing the potential for criminal charges, and the Crown Prosecution Service has already begun reviewing some of the evidence.
For bereaved families and survivors, the announcement brings movement but not resolution. Grenfell United, which represents some of them, called it an important step in a process that has already taken far too long. The group said: “For our community, this is not news we meet with celebration. We meet it with caution, grief and determination. We have waited almost a decade for accountability.”
Detective Superintendent Garry Moncrieff said the findings are not expected to vary a lot as the case advances and that investigators have gathered strong evidence. He said it is important that police do it once and do it right, a reminder that even after years of work, the final legal judgment is still ahead. The next milestone comes when the files go to prosecutors in 2026, but the people tied to one of Britain’s deadliest tower block fires may not see a courtroom for years after that.
