Calls for Pickles to lose peerage and government role after report criticism

Eric Pickles, the housing secretary at the time of the Grenfell Tower fire, is facing calls to quit as a Tory peer over the report into the disaster but he blamed "middle-ranking officials" for failing to act on a coroner's warning about fire safety.

-  Rowena Mason

Emma Dent Coad, who was Kensington's MP when the fire killed 72 people, said Pickles should "have the grace to resign" from the Lords and as a government ethics adviser after criticism in the report. Matt Wrack, the general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, also said Pickles should be stripped of his peerage.

The report found Pickles and his department had failed to act on a coroner's 2013 recommendation to tighten fire safety regulations after a cladding fire at Lakanal House, another London council block, killed six people. It was "not treated with any sense of urgency", the inquiry found, and the tightening had not happened by the time of the Grenfell disaster on 14 June 2017.

In a statement, Pickles said he had spoken about the coroner's recommendation as a "serious matter" to the then-permanent secretary, Bob Kerslake, who died last year.

He said Kerslake was the finest public official he had worked with and was tasked with overseeing the response to Lakanal House. "During the inquiry, evidence emerged that middle-ranking officials did not share Bob's deep-seated sense of public duty. Their attitude shocked and appalled me. I feel they let down Bob, the government and, more importantly, the public," he said.