The government has framed the latest Grenfell development as both a legal milestone and a test of state accountability more than nine years after 72 people died in the June 2017 fire. In a statement published on GOV.UK, Angela Rayner said the bereaved families, survivors and the immediate Grenfell community remained the first consideration as the case moved to its next stage. Rayner also issued a formal apology on behalf of the British state. She said government had failed in its basic duty to keep Grenfell Tower residents safe and accepted that the deaths followed deep failings across the building safety system.
The immediate trigger for the statement was the Metropolitan Police announcement that case files had been handed to the Crown Prosecution Service. Those files arise from Operation Northleigh, the police investigation established after the fire. The department said that transfer marks an important procedural step. It also stressed that Operation Northleigh has been conducted independently of ministers and that the next decisions now rest with the independent criminal justice process.
The statement goes further than previous public comments by confirming that MHCLG was told in 2023 that it was under investigation. According to the department, officials cooperated fully throughout. That disclosure also explains why the department had not previously discussed its position in public. The statement says ministers withheld detail, including the department's own status as a subject of the investigation, in order to protect the integrity of the police process.
The most significant new point is that the Metropolitan Police has now confirmed to the department that a file relating to MHCLG has been referred to the CPS. Prosecutors will conduct a full and independent review of the evidence. On the department's account, the CPS will consider whether the evidential test has been met in relation to a potential breach of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. The referral does not itself amount to a charging decision, but it moves the matter into formal prosecutorial assessment.
Rayner described the development as serious and said the government would respond with appropriate care and diligence. The statement adds that the CPS will lead on the next steps and that government will continue to cooperate fully. For policy and regulatory readers, that matters because the case is no longer framed only by the Grenfell Tower Inquiry and the reform programme that followed it. It is now also shaped by an active CPS review involving the department itself.
The statement returns repeatedly to the wider failures exposed by the Grenfell Tower Inquiry. Rayner said confidence in the system will be rebuilt only through sustained action and visible change. That places the current moment in a broader policy context. The referral to the CPS sits alongside the longer effort to change how building safety is regulated, how risks are identified, and how central government is held to account when oversight fails.
For housing providers, local authorities and residents, the message is that Grenfell continues to define the building safety debate across government. The latest referral does not settle questions of criminal liability, but it does deepen scrutiny of whether public institutions can be answerable for their part in regulatory failure. The political significance is equally direct. By confirming the department's position in the investigation and restating an apology on behalf of the state, ministers have accepted that trust will depend not only on new rules, but on demonstrable change in how safe homes are governed and delivered.