General   (General discussion, talk about anything.)

In 2003 the fire service in England attended 473,600 fires. There has been a steady decline since then. In 2017 the number of fires attended was 162,000.
Today’s Private Eye notes,
The Grenfell inquiry chairman said the risks were known since at least the 1991 non fatal Knowsley Heights fire.
Lessons weren’t learnt from the 2009 Laksnal House fire in Southwark which killed 6 people.
One month before the Grenfell House fire the head of London Fire Brigade’s fire safety department wrote to London local authorities warning of the dangers of external fire spread in tall buildings.The letter highlighted the fact that external panels tested after the Shepherd’s Bush fire in 2016 did not meet the requirements of the building regulations in terms of combustibility. Yet very, if any, of the incident commanders or senior officers who attended the Grenfell fire were aware of the risks posed by exterior cladding.