Grenfell fire chief bows to pressure and retires
‘Should have done it a long time ago’
THE fire chief who faced stinging criticism over the Grenfell Tower tragedy was forced to quit yesterday after losing the support of families bereaved in the inferno.
Dany Cotton announced she is to retire earlier than expected at the end of this month.
She had been due to leave London Fire Brigade (LFB) in April after 32 years of service, and is still expected to receive an estimated £2million pension pot.
The 50-year- old – the capital’s first female fire chief – had resisted calls to resign from families and survivors of the tower block blaze, in which 72 people were killed.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan is understood to have felt compelled to act after a delegation of families went to City Hall to call for Miss Cotton to go. Mr Khan was said to be concerned that the brigade was at risk of losing Londoners’ trust.
The news of Miss Cotton’s departure was welcomed by survivors’ group Grenfell United, which said it would help to ‘keep Londoners safe’. And Nabil Choucair, who lost six members of his family in the fire, said Miss Cotton should have stepped down earlier.
He said: ‘If she cared and understood, she would have done it a long time ago. It should not have taken this long, it’s a disgrace.’
Flora Neda, whose husband was killed, said it was a ‘step forward’ in the families’ fight for justice, adding: ‘It makes us feel not quite as hopeless.’ A representative of the
Grenfell Next of Kin group said they had met with Mr Khan last month and thanked him for ‘hearing our voices’.
In October, Grenfell Inquiry chairman Sir Martin Moore-Bick found LFB’s preparedness for a tower block fire was ‘gravely inadequate’ and said more lives could have been saved if the controversial ‘stay put’ policy had been abandoned earlier.
Miss Cotton also faced personal criticism for her ‘remarkable insensitivity’ during her evidence to the inquiry, when she said she would not have changed the fire brigade’s response to the fire.
She has since expressed regret for her comments, and said senior officers would review the inquiry’s recommendations ‘carefully and fully’.
But she vowed to stay on, arguing she wanted to ‘continue to protect the people of London’. The Fire Brigades Union has said it was wrong to ‘scapegoat’ firefighters.
Earlier this month, Conservative hopeful and former fire service minister Sir Mike Penning, who was a firefighter before he entered politics, backed calls for Miss Cotton to resign over her ‘blind’ handling of the disaster.
Commenting on her retirement, Miss Cotton said she felt ‘proud’ and ‘honoured’ to have served London and to have stood ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with firefighters during her career. She said: ‘I will never forget tragedies like the Clapham Junction rail disaster or the acts of terrorism that we have faced, but Grenfell Tower was without doubt the worst fire we had ever experienced.’
Her successor will be appointed later this month by Mr Khan.