Winseer:
“A gun to the head of local fire inspectors” might be exactly what happened…“Rubber stamp our corner-cutting methods on this council, or we’ll shut down a few more fire stations in YOUR area.”
Sounds like too many ended up being closed down anyway, bearing in mind that the nearest “hi-reach” fire ladder was outside of the M25 when the fire emergency call came in…
The issue of plastic clad tower blocks is nation wide not just in London there’s no way that can just be the result of some dodgy local malpractice.
Can’t really understand why the highest tower fire fighting/rescue capability equipment seemed to be based in Surrey. 
Although you can bet that it still wasn’t high enough nor effective enough nor enough of it regardless.It’s difficult to see what even that could do in the case of a plastics fuelled fire spreading across and up the external walls of a large building like a blow torch.IE you’re not going to get enough if any people out of the windows from a tower escape in that situation nor will a single monitor cover the massive area.All you can hope for is to get enough water into the inside of the building to suppress the heat and spread of the flames internally and then hope the people can escape or you can rescue the people from the inside of it.Maybe something along the lines of dedicated permanent large stationary engines and massive pumps on site connected to hydrants and risers and sprinkler systems especially in corridors and on the stair ways would be a helpful solution to the problem.The problem as usual being tombstone economics.