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Hello and welcome to the Grenfell Tower Inquiry podcast with me, Kate Lamble.

It's going to be a short episode this week because the inquiry only sat for one day.

There was, however, a significant disagreement about the responsibility the London Fire Brigade should hold

for the failure to arrange an early evacuation

at Grenfell Tower. It was part of the closing statements for two parts of the inquiry, which

looked at firefighting and how the London Fire Brigade prepared their staff for a fire like that

they would face on the 14th of June 2017. We'll start with Danny Friedman, who represents one group of bereaved survivors and

residents. He said at Grenfell there were six failures by the LFB.

All foreseeable, all preventable and all in their own way causative of the extent of loss of life.

First, he said, firefighters and managers remained in ignorance of the catastrophic construction

risks posed by cladding fires.

Even though those risks were known about within the organisation and cladding fires were

increasing in their frequency in the UK and around the world.

Two, premises risk assessments were carried out incompetently and in a fashion that did not meet the requirements of law, policy or the safety of firefighters, all members of the public.

Third, Danny Friedman added, was the education and preparation of incident commanders who directed operations.

Anything out of the ordinary was likely to overwhelm their training.

Four, there was no developed thinking at all, let alone teaching and guidance about how to support high-rise residential evacuations.

Five, the LFB tolerated inadequate fireground radio communications, and especially so in relation to the Barry

headsets that firefighters were to communicate with their bridgehead and incident commanders,

but which do not work properly in high-rise buildings.

The final failure related to the LFB's control room where emergency 999 calls are answered.

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