The local authority building control officer responsible for inspecting the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower has said austerity-driven staffing cuts at Kensington and Chelsea council ramped up his workload and stopped him from visiting construction sites as often as he wanted.

John Hoban told the Grenfell Tower Inquiry – probing the background to 2017’s fire in which 72 lives were lost – that he had taken on the work of two other colleagues by the time he was tasked with inspecting work on the ill-fated refurbishment project.