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  "path": "/2026/04/02/reform-housing-chief-hits-grenfell-regulations-saying-everyone-dies-end-27821369/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-04-02T08:54:57.000Z",
  "site": "https://metro.co.uk",
  "tags": [
    "News",
    "Politics",
    "Grenfell Tower fire",
    "Housing",
    "Nigel Farage",
    "Reform UK",
    "fire",
    "Inside Housing",
    "Grenfell fire",
    "London",
    "Find out how much you could borrow online",
    "work",
    "report from the Regulator of Social Housing",
    "England",
    "Keir Starmer",
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    "check our news page",
    "Add Metro as a Preferred Source on Google\nAdd as preferred source"
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  "textContent": "Simon Dudley joined Reform UK in February after leaving the Conservatives (Credits: PA)\n\nSurvivors of the Grenfell tower fire have accused Reform UK’s housing spokesman of ‘erasing responsibility’ after he argued fire regulations are disproportionate because ‘everyone dies in the end’.\n\nSimon Dudley, a former chair of Ebbsfleet Development Corporation, was appointed as the party’s housing policy chief by Nigel Farage last month.\n\nIn an interview with Inside Housing, he was asked whether he considered the 2017 Grenfell fire a warning about the impact of insufficient regulation.\n\nDudley replied that he believed the raft of new safety regulations went too far, saying: ‘Sadly, you know, everyone dies in the end. It’s just how you go, right?’\n\nArguing that deaths in housefires are rare if Grenfell is extracted from statistics, he added: ‘You can’t stop tragic things happening.\n\n‘You can try to minimise excesses, but bad things do happen.’\n\nThe 2017 fire at a high-rise tower block in west London caused 72 deaths and left dozens of other people injured.\n\n##  Ready to start your homebuying journey?\n\nYou can access completely fee-free mortgage advice with London & Country (L&C) Mortgages, a partner of Metro. Customers benefit from:\n\n– Award winning service from the UK’s leading mortgage broker\n\n– Expert advisors on hand 7 days a week\n\n– Access to 1000s of mortgage deals from across the market\n\nUnlike many mortgage brokers, L&C won’t charge you a fee for their advice.\n\nFind out how much you could borrow online\n\n_Mortgage service provided by London & Country Mortgages (L&C), which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (registered number: 143002). The FCA does not regulate most Buy to Let mortgages. Your home or property may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage._\n\nCalls were made for immediate remediation work after it was discovered that similar unsafe cladding – the culprit for the terrifying pace of the Grenfell fire’s spread – was used on many other buildings.\n\nA report from the Regulator of Social Housing released last week found that 279 social housing buildings in England face a wait of more than 10 years for potentially deadly safety defects to be fixed.\n\nThe 2017 tragedy resulted in a wave of shock and anger over the quality of social housing (Picture: Ben Whitley/PA Wire)\n\nIn a statement, bereaved and survivor group Grenfell United said Dudley’s comment on the tower fire ‘is not just insensitive, it is deeply dehumanising’.\n\nThey said: ‘Our loved ones did not simply ‘die.’ They were failed.\n\n‘They were trapped in their homes, in a building that should have been safe, in a fire that should never have happened. Reducing their deaths to an inevitability strips away the truth: this was preventable.’\n\nThe statement continued: ‘To speak about Grenfell in this way is to erase responsibility.\n\n‘It suggests this was just fate, just “how it goes,” rather than the result of years of ignored warnings, poor decisions, and a failure to value the lives of residents, and is deeply offensive and ill informed.\n\n‘Everyone deserves the right to a safe home. But this attitude clearly shows Simon Dudley is not the man to ensure that happens.’\n\nHis remarks were also condemned by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in a post on X.\n\nHe wrote: ‘Shameful. Nigel Farage should do the decent thing and sack him.’\n\nHousing Secretary Steve Reed said: ‘If Nigel Farage has an ounce of decency, he will sack his housing chief immediately.\n\n‘These disgraceful comments about those who died in the Grenfell Tower fire are beyond the pale and it is completely untenable for Simon Dudley to continue in his position.’\n\nGreen MP Sian Berry joined the chorus, saying: ‘Anyone who has any awareness of what Grenfell residents went through, in fact anyone with any empathy or humanity, will find these comments truly abhorrent.’\n\nIn a response to the criticism, Dudley wrote on X: ‘Grenfell was an utter tragedy and quite rightly prompted a wholesale review and tightening of fire regulations.\n\n‘I said it was a tragedy in my interview with Inside Housing and in no shape or form am I belittling that disaster or the huge loss of life.\n\n‘It must never happen again. I reiterate that, and am sorry if it was not sufficiently clear.’\n\nHe added that his ‘concern is the introduction of numerous measures that do nothing to protect life and are throttling housebuilding’.\n\n******Get in touch with our news team by emailing us atwebnews@metro.co.uk.******\n\n**For more stories like this,** check our news page.\n\nComment now Comments \nAdd Metro as a Preferred Source on Google\nAdd as preferred source\n",
  "title": "Grenfell survivors condemn Reform housing chief’s ‘deeply offensive’ comments"
}