THE firefighter initially in charge of the response to the Grenfell Tower blaze revealed today that he had received no training in evacuating tall buildings with a “stay-put” policy.

Michael Downden, a watch manager at North Kensington with 15 years’ service in the London Fire Brigade (LFB), told the inquiry into the disaster that he had received no training on “how to re-evaluate the advice offered” to residents during an incident.

Advice to stay put is based on the premise that a fire in a high-rise building can be contained within the flat where it broke out, but expert evidence presented to the inquiry indicates that the policy had failed within about half an hour of the fire starting.