But subsequent revelations show that, while the tragedy took place as a result of very specific circumstances, it highlighted a deep-seated UK construction industry malaise which has affected thousands of buildings and tens of thousands of occupants.

The report of the public inquiry into Grenfell, and its recommendations about the future, have therefore to be seen in conjunction with the daily disaster affecting the lives of those metaphorically trapped in dangerous and often unsaleable apartments.

In respect of the latter, the former government minister Michael Gove has been lamenting the slowness with which his policy to get repairs done at the expense of house-builders/contractors has taken place, and as usual the new Labour government is blaming everything on its Conservative predecessor. In fact Gove acted quite quickly, though his initiatives have yet to work across the board. (The introduction of new legislation, in the form of the Building Safety Act, has done something to redress the balance between professionals and contractor clients.)

However, issues of legal liability do not simply vanish at the stroke of a politician’s pen. Shortages of qualified professionals who can assess and approve what insurers and freeholders now want done is a big problem. On liability, one party may be told to carry out necessary repairs of sub-standard buildings, which never complied with Building Regulations in the first place. It does not prevent them from suing other parties who may have been complicit or associated with the sub-standard delivery of those homes.

As the Grenfell report makes clear, there were multiple failures by almost every party involved, which is why media headlines in the wake of publication have switched attention from one group to another. One day it is the architects who got it all wrong, but the next it is about incompetent design-and-build contracting. Or the failures of the local authority inspection regime – but perhaps most tellingly the role of the insulation and cladding manufacturers in deliberately misleading designers and clients about the appropriateness of their products.

In this respect, Celotex, Arconic and Kingspan have an awful lot to answer for. Their behaviour, as outlined by the inquiry report, took place in the context of testing regimes which themselves are the subject of criticism, since they could not cope with deliberately dishonest gaming of the tests themselves. (It is a pity that the inquiry was unable to review the proposals made by former Davis Langdon chief Paul Morrell, also a former government construction ‘czar’, who produced a report at the government’s request on the future of testing and certification. Since its implication involved the failure of Whitehall and ministers, it is perhaps not surprising that it was published a year late and with zero fanfare – no big press release or conference. However, it is a first-rate document and should be read in conjunction with the Grenfell report itself.)

Underlying all this was what was described at the inquiry as a ‘merry-go-round of buck-passing’ – that is to say risk transfer. The reason it has been so difficult to identify who was responsible for what, and why it will take ages to bring criminal prosecutions, is because design-and-build as a procurement process is fundamentally flawed. In reality, d and b companies do not take responsibility for design, whether it is by qualified architects or unqualified sub-contractors, to whom Mr DandB has given the actual task of producing detailed and/or fabrication drawings.

The architects at Grenfell, who most certainly made mistakes and have paid a huge personal and professional price, were responsible on paper for just about anything – except in reality they weren’t. Their original design proposed zinc cladding and no cavity, by the way. They were in the classic situation of having responsibility without authority, having been novated to the d and b contractor, by which time the latter had started procuring detailed drawings from sub-contractors.

Ask the sub-contractors if they were responsible and you get ‘not me, guv’, as with the insulation and cladding manufacturers.

Construction lawyers, although never discussed at the inquiry, surely have a lot to answer for in respect of the culture of ducking responsibility, which they have encouraged by ‘serving the interests of their clients’. Those interests may turn out to involve dishonesty, evasion, bypassing rules and codes and sometimes forcing responsibility onto others in a disgraceful fashion.

An example of this is where architects appointed to a job are told that, if they wish to undertake it, not only must they take on liability for their own work, but also for that of other professional team members with whom the architect has no contractual relationship. The architect is forced to be insured (unlike contractors) so why not load everything onto them? If they refuse, they may lose the job. This is legal extortion.

Everybody involved in the creation of buildings should be liable for their own actions – and they should have the authority to ensure that what they are responsible for happens. A good mantra, not just for architects but for all those involved in design and delivery, would be ‘No responsibility without authority’.

That principle has begun to be recognized under the Building Safety Act recently introduced. The ‘Principal Designer’ cannot sub-contract their responsibilities to anybody else. Ditto the ‘Principal Accountable Person’, ie the client.

Another good slogan would be: ‘No hiding place’.