Peter Willoughby Memorial Lecture:
Law and Remediation in the Aftermath of the Grenfell Tower Fire: A Private Law ‘Moment’
30 November 2026 (Monday), 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM
11/F, Cheng Yu Tung Tower, The University of Hong Kong
In June 2017, a fire broke out in Grenfell Tower, a 24-storey residential tower block in London, England. Fuelled by combustible materials installed when the building was refurbished, the fire devastated Grenfell Tower and caused the deaths of seventy-two people. It also generated a wider building safety crisis across England, with investigations revealing that around 10,000 residential buildings – comprising approximately 600,000 dwellings – had life-critical fire safety defects. Almost ten years after the fire, remediation has not even begun on more than half of these buildings.
This lecture considers the role of private law in providing redress to apartment owners affected by this building safety crisis. It centres on two core questions: who, if anyone, can be compelled to remediate the building; and who can be made to pay? Surprisingly, familiar private law routes offered little by way of an answer. Speaking for owners, a campaign group stated: ‘We were sold homes that should have been safe. You have more protection buying a toaster.’
Responding to the urgent need for a solution, the government passed the Building Safety Act 2022, drawing on the ‘polluter pays’ idea and reflecting the principle that those who caused the problem should be made both to fix it and to pay for it. The lecture explores the radical nature of this State intervention and argues that it represents a private law ‘moment’: a juncture at which an urgent policy need makes clear that even well-established private law rules are not permanent, and that the State has a key, ongoing role in adapting private law to achieve policy objectives.
Speaker:
Sue Bright is an Emerita Professor of Land Law at the University of Oxford and Emerita Fellow of New College, Oxford. Her recent research focusses on the legal and practical challenges of multi-owned buildings and residential developments, including leasehold reform, environmental upgrades, building and fire safety following the Grenfell Tower fire, and the management of modern private housing estates.
She founded the Housing after Grenfell blog in 2018, co-edited with Professor Ben McFarlane, to explain the developing building safety crisis and legal responses to it. She is also co-editor of Private Law and Building Safety, which brings together international perspectives on building safety through the lens of private law.
Moderator:
Kelvin Low, Professor, The University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law