Tracking what Reform UK says — and what the facts say back
Reform in Power15 Apr 2026
REFORM UK, GRENFELL, AND THEIR RESPONSE TO THE TRAGEDY
Simon Dudley, a former executive at Homes England and the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation who joined Reform in February, said the deadly blaze was a “tragedy” but that “everyone dies in the end”.
On 2 April 2026, Simon Dudley, Reform UK’s newly appointed housing and infrastructure spokesperson, sat down for an interview with trade publication Inside Housing. He had been in the role for less than a month. By midday the following day, he was out of it.
The reason was a series of comments about the Grenfell Tower fire, the 2017 blaze that killed 72 people in a west London tower block and led to one of the most significant overhauls of building safety law in modern British history.
Dudley told the interviewer that post-Grenfell regulations had “swung too far the wrong way” and were stifling housebuilding.
“That was a tragedy. It was a failure. Sadly, you know, everyone dies in the end. It’s just how you go, right?”— Simon Dudley, interview with Inside Housing, 2 April 2026
He went further, suggesting that fire deaths were statistically rare and that, because more people die on roads than in house fires, we shouldn’t let safety regulation get in the way of building homes. “Extracting Grenfell from the statistics,” he said, “people dying in house fires is rare… many, many more people die on the roads driving cars, but we’re not making cars illegal, so why are we stopping houses being built?”
What the Grenfell Inquiry found
The 72 people who died were not victims of an inevitable tragedy. They were victims of decades of ignored warnings, dangerous cladding that had been knowingly used on the building, and a failure by government, industry and the building’s managers to take fire safety seriously.
Grenfell United, the group representing bereaved families and survivors, responded to Dudley’s comments with a statement that cut to the heart of why his words caused such outrage.
“Our loved ones did not simply ‘die’. They were failed. They were trapped in their homes, in a building that should have been safe, in a fire that should never have happened. Reducing their deaths to an inevitability strips away the truth: this was preventable.” — Grenfell United, 2 April 2026
Reform’s response
Prior to Dudley’s sacking, Reform directed journalists to Dudley’s LinkedIn statement that read
“I said it was a tragedy in my interview with Inside Housing and in no shape or form am I belittling that disaster or the huge loss of life.”
A Reform UK spokesman said: “Simon’s comments on Grenfell reflected his broader point that the regulatory pendulum has swung too far in response to the tragedy.”
With urges from the PM, Keir Starmer, who had called on Farage to “do the decent thing” and sack Dudley, Farage announced at a press conference that “He is no longer a spokesman for the party. That’s been dealt with… the comments were deeply inappropriate. Richard Tice has dealt with him”.
Housing Secretary Reed concluded: “Reform’s first instinct was to defend him, not sack him, and they had to be dragged kicking and screaming into finally doing the right thing. Nigel Farage should apologise to the victims’ families for putting Dudley in such a senior position in the first place.”
