On 14 June 2017, a fire started in a refrigerator on the fourth floor of Grenfell Tower in London. Seventy-two people died. It remains one of the deadliest structural fires in modern history, and one of the most preventable.
Eight years later, the gap that matters is not between what we know and what we don’t know. It is between what we know and what has actually been built, mandated, and enforced.
What the Evidence Shows
Grenfell Tower had no automatic fire sprinkler system. That fact sits at the center of every serious analysis of the disaster. Fire safety professionals have stated consistently that a working sprinkler system would almost certainly have controlled the fire within the flat where it started, before it reached the combustible cladding that turned a contained incident into a catastrophe affecting the entire building.
At the time of the fire, approximately 96 percent of London’s council-owned tower blocks had no sprinkler protection. Grenfell underwent a major renovation in 2015 and 2016. No sprinklers were added. Cost was cited as a barrier, with estimates of approximately £200,000 for a retrofit. Seventy-two people died.
The data on sprinkler effectiveness is not ambiguous:
- Automatic fire sprinklers reduce civilian fire deaths by 80 to 90 percent in buildings where they are present and properly maintained
- Average fire damage in a sprinklered building is approximately 4 square meters (43 square feet), compared to 18 square meters (194 square feet) without sprinklers
- No one has ever died in a UK household fire where sprinklers were working as designed
In the vast majority of fires, only one or two sprinklers activate, controlling the fire quickly and with minimal water damage
The Lacrosse Tower Comparison
Three years before Grenfell, a remarkably similar fire occurred on the other side of the world. In November 2014, a cigarette ignited combustible materials on an eighth-floor balcony of the Lacrosse apartment building in Melbourne, Australia. The fire spread rapidly up the facade via the same type of aluminum composite cladding with a polyethylene core that would later be implicated at Grenfell.
The outcome was entirely different.
Lacrosse Tower had an automatic fire sprinkler system. Sprinklers activated on multiple floors, controlling internal spread while more than 400 residents evacuated safely. There were no fatalities. Injuries were minor. Property damage was approximately AUD 5.7 million, significant but manageable.
The cladding failure at Lacrosse was nearly identical to Grenfell in its mechanism. The difference in outcome was not luck. It was active fire suppression.
These two fires, on opposite sides of the world, three years apart, with the same cladding failure, tell the same story. Buildings with sprinklers give people a chance to survive. Buildings without them do not.
What Changed After Grenfell
The United Kingdom made meaningful reforms following the inquiry. In 2018, the government banned combustible cladding on new residential buildings over 18 meters (59 feet). Sprinkler requirements, previously applied to new buildings over 30 meters (98 feet), were lowered to 11 meters (36 feet) in England, with Scotland going further and requiring sprinklers in all new residential buildings.
The Grenfell Tower Inquiry’s final report in 2024 made 58 recommendations focused on competence, oversight, and accountability. These are important. But the report stopped short of calling for universal sprinkler mandates in existing buildings, and retrofitting older housing stock remains incomplete across the UK and in many countries that looked on from abroad.
Reforms that apply only to new construction protect the people who will live in buildings that have not yet been built. They do not protect the people living in buildings that already exist.
The Policy Gap That Remains
For policymakers and code officials, the lesson of Grenfell is not simply that combustible cladding is dangerous. It is that passive fire safety measures alone are not sufficient. Compartmentation, fire-resistant materials, and evacuation planning all matters. But when a fire starts, it is active suppression that controls it before it becomes unsurvivable.
Every jurisdiction that has not yet mandated sprinklers in high-rise residential buildings is making a choice. That choice has consequences that are well documented and entirely foreseeable.
The barriers most often cited are cost and the complexity of retrofitting existing buildings. These are real challenges, but there is no reason to leave buildings unprotected indefinitely.
The estimated cost to retrofit Grenfell Tower with sprinklers was approximately £200,000. The human, economic, and social cost of the fire that followed is incalculable.
A Call to Action
June 14, 2025, marks eight years since Grenfell. It is an appropriate moment to measure the distance between what was learned and what has been done.
IFSA calls on policymakers and code officials in every jurisdiction to:
- Require automatic fire sprinklers in all new residential high-rise construction, without threshold exemptions
- Establish clear timelines and funded pathways for sprinkler retrofits in existing high-rise residential buildings
- Eliminate regulatory gaps that allow older buildings to remain unprotected simply because they predate current requirements
- Treat active fire suppression as a non-negotiable component of any building fire safety strategy, alongside passive measures
The evidence has been available for decades. Grenfell made it impossible to ignore. Lacrosse showed what a different outcome looks like.
People living in high-rise buildings today deserve the same protection. Policymakers have the authority to provide it. The question is whether they will.
Read the full Grenfell Tower Report: https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20250320032754/https://www.grenfelltowerinquiry.org.uk/phase-2-report