'Everyone failed' on Grenfell, says buildings boss

"I'm not involved in heroes and villains - [Grenfell] was total system failure."

These are the words of Andy Roe, chairman of the Building Safety Regulator (BSR), the body in charge of safety and design in the nation's high-rise buildings, nearly 70% of which are in London.

Known as Lord Roe of West Wickham, a former firefighter and London Fire Brigade commissioner, he received a life peerage and took his seat in The House of Lords in January.

He now leads the body set up in the wake of the Grenfell tragedy to make tall buildings safer, and says every public and private institution failed on that tragic night in June 2017.

Lord Roe's acting chief executive at the BSR is Charlie Pugsley, who was also his deputy commissioner at the brigade.

Both were at the Grenfell fire and both said they are driven in their new roles by the events they witnessed.

Lord Roe told BBC London: "Charlie and I had a very direct experience of that tragedy.

"We witnessed the loss of an unbelievable amount of lives - 72 people, God rest their souls.

"We saw the disrespect and destruction of a community that should have been listened to," he added.

"I'm not interested in heroes and villains and I think I'm in a position where I can say that.

"I think Charlie is too because we were there that night and we looked down the barrel of that."

He added: "Every single institution involved - private, public, state, local government, the management organisation, the manufacturers who lied, my own organisation: the London Fire Brigade.

"There was unbelievable heroism from rank and file firefighters on the night, but the institution itself let the community down and let the firefighters down in its lack of preparation and its lack of foresight.

"So I'm not involved in heroes and villains - this was total system failure."

The BSR is responsible for overseeing the design and safety of all tower blocks of 18 metres or above, equivalent to seven storeys.

Construction firms have to submit designs to them before building. The same is true for those trying to remediate unsafe buildings.

According to the latest figures, there are 192 high-rise blocks in London in the process of being remediated at the moment - more than the 149 in the rest of the country combined.

There are also nearly 90 high-rise buildings in progress in the capital, with 20 of the 28 new-build decisions in the last three months having been in the capital.

Roe and Pugsley have been in post around a year, initially trying to unblock a massive backlog of building applications and now trying to speed up the remediatio