The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s (MHCLG) top official has admitted the department ‘could have done more’ in response to the Grenfell Tower fire.

Giving evidence to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) last week, MHCLG permanent secretary Melanie Dawes said: ‘With hindsight, the degree of badly built buildings where safety just had not been taken seriously enough was higher than any of us expected at the beginning so could we have moved faster, assumed a worse situation out there and put even more effort into it?