London fire brigade chief denies she should have expected Grenfell

The London fire brigade commissioner, Dany Cotton, has claimed the ferocity of the Grenfell Tower fire was so unexpected that it was like “the space shuttle landing on the Shard”, even though she conceded that the brigade knew about the risk of cladding fires nine months before the blaze.Giving evidence in front of a packed inquiry room, Cotton admitted she did not know about an internal fire brigade presentation detailing the risks.Survivors of the June 2017 disaster, which killed 7