On 19 May 2026, the Metropolitan Police announced that files would be sent to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to seek charging decisions about 57 individuals and 20 companies in relation to the 72 deaths caused by the fire at Grenfell Tower in West London on 14 June 2017. The CPS responded by saying that it expected to make such decisions by June 2027 – some ten years after the atrocity. Furthermore, any trials will not commence until 2028 at the earliest.
Charges under consideration include corporate manslaughter. But can the charge of corporate manslaughter stick in the context of Grenfell?
Corporate killing law in/action
In the wake of a series of high-profile, multiple-fatality, work-related disasters in the UK during the 1980s and 1990s, the existing law of gross negligence manslaughter proved to be incapable of holding to account large, complexly organised corporations for the preventable deaths of workers, rail and ferry passengers, and various members of the public.
After years of struggle and compromise, involving governments, business organisations and the labour movement, the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act was passed in 2007. This established in law that a corporate body – a company, local authority, NHS trust, university, prison and so on – is capable of committing manslaughter as a result of offences via established patterns of decision making, deficiencies in corporate structure, culture, policies or ways of working.
Since the new law came into force in April 2008, there have been 37 convictions under the Act; during this same period, there have been some 6,000 work-related deaths reported to the relevant regulator, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). These official data significantly understate the actual number of such deaths.
If the level of prosecutions is derisory, is the law doing what it was established to do – namely, bringing to book large, complex organisations? The clear answer is no: only one of the 37 convictions to date – against a medium-sized subsidiary – has been of a kind that would likely not have succeeded prior to the 2007 Act.
The failings of the 2007 Act?
Given the fact that the law has not yet been used against a large organsation, it is premature to say that it does not ‘work’ – it has not been tested in such a context. In fact, for me the failings of the law are rooted in extra-legal reasons; the problem is not the design of the law but the organisational and societal contexts within which it operates. At a societal level, critical criminology in this area has long established the power of the prevailing ideology that deaths in corporate settings are ‘accidents’ (used alongside synonyms such as disasters and tragedies) – unfortunate, unexpected incidents that are unforeseeable and with no apparent or deliberate cause.
The framing as ‘accident’ performs important ideological work: it removes questions of responsibility and limits public pressure for criminal accountability.
Relatedly, and again a consistent finding within corporate crime criminology, is the dominant understanding that corporate crime is not ‘real’ crime – an idea maintained by political priorities and rhetoric, media representations and, I might add, by much academic criminology, so underpinning popular consciousness.
At an organisational level, the key bodies involved in corporate manslaughter prosecution lack expertise and competency – given the rarity of such cases – and attach little priority to prosecuting them.
Long established is the fact that the HSE does not see itself as a prosecutorial body, while its enforcement capabilities have in any case been systematically undermined over 40 years. The police sees itself – and is seen – as dealing with ‘real’ crimes and does not have the expertise in, nor attaches priority to, corporate killing.
Similarly, the CPS rarely receives files on corporate manslaughter and, when it does, refers them to its Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division; it is unlikely that within such a division, corporate manslaughter will be viewed either in resource or political terms as of high a profile as counterterrorism.
Taken together, these institutional contexts generate a system in which corporate killing cases are structurally exceptional, lacking expertise and priority.
Grenfell as corporate killing?
At the very least, corporate manslaughter legislation requires a high-profile ‘win’ if its credibility is to be established. Notably, prosecutions of key corporate bodies implicated in the 2017 Grenfell Tower may significantly invigorate the legislation given the profile of the atrocity.
Introducing the final inquiry report into the fire, the “simple truth”, said enquiry chair Moore-Bick, is that “the deaths that occurred were all avoidable and that those who lived in the tower were badly failed over a number of years and in a number of different ways by those who were responsible for ensuring the safety of the building and its occupants.”
The “key players” upon which the Inquiry focused “all contributed to it in one way or another, in most cases through incompetence but in some cases through calculated dishonesty and greed”. Thus the bereaved, survivors and residents were institutionally failed.
These ‘key players’ included Arconic (manufacturer of the flammable aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding that surrounded the tower); Celotex (and the St Gobain group of which it is a part) and Kingspan (manufacturer of the combustible insulation materials used); Harley Facades (the cladding sub-contractor); Exova (the fire engineer); C S Stokes and Associates (the fire risk assessor); Rydon (the main contractor in Grenfell’s refurbishment); Studio E (the architects); and both the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (the local authority) and the Kensington and Chelsea Tenants Management Organisation (the body that manages social housing on behalf of the local authority).
Such findings clearly implicate the litany of corporate bodies involved in the 2014–2016 refurbishment of the tower – the refurbishment that fitted the deadly cladding, turning the tower into something akin to a kiln after a small electrical fire had broken out in one flat in the early hours of 14 June 2017.
The complexity of this network of actors illustrates precisely why corporate manslaughter law struggles: responsibility is distributed across design, materials, regulation, contracting and oversight.
But responsibility for 72 deaths does not equate to legal culpability. That will be formally determined in the coming years, with trials potentially running until the mid-2030s. The Grenfell atrocity will likely become a key test of whether corporate manslaughter law can ever bridge the gap between moral responsibility and legal liability.
There is, of course, a wider discussion to be had as to whether this, or any, criminal law – which can determine accountability – can actually deliver justice. My own view is that it cannot in the corporate context.
But many of those affected by corporate killing do see convictions of the culpable as a central element of securing justice, perhaps as a necessary but not sufficient condition. In this context, the dignified words of Grenfell United on the day of the Met’s announcement of likely charges are a fitting close:
“Today’s update from the Metropolitan Police marks an important step in a process that has already taken far too long … 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. No family should have to wait over ten years for justice for their loved ones, if it comes at all … Grenfell was not a tragedy without cause. Those responsible must now be held to account.”
Steve Tombs is Emeritus Professor at The Open University.
Still getting away with murder: the failures of Corporate Manslaughter law in the UK by Steve Tombs is available to read open access in the Journal of Poverty and Social Justice on Bristol University Press Digital.
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