The Grenfell Effect

The Grenfell Tower fire in 2017 was the UK’s worst residential fire since the Blitz. 72 people died. Their names and faces are remembered here.

This tragedy profoundly impacted the local community, leaving lasting trauma for the victims' families, neighbours, and friends, who continue to seek justice. It also inflicted significant reputational damage on the construction industry, which persists despite efforts to improve building safety regulations, accountability, standards, product testing, marketing, and safety inspections.

For the past seven years, we have tracked how the national media has reported on the Grenfell tragedy to see what trends emerged.

We could not monitor all the media coverage of the fire, but we have been keeping an eye on a small section of national media and influential journalists to see how the story unfolded.

We were interested to see how the construction industry would be portrayed, and to identify the themes and patterns over time – what were the main headlines that would cut through to the public and what impact would this have on the perception of construction.

Our research is continuing, and further insights will be published on our website following the release of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry's final report and recommendations.

Here are the headline figures:

• We analysed 781 articles, videos and interviews from The BBC, The Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Times and Sunday Times and The Sun.
• Construction product companies Arconic, Kingspan, and Celotex were mentioned 90 times in our analysis.

Download the full visual report by clicking here.