The criminal investigation into the Grenfell Tower disaster may consider individual as well as corporate manslaughter charges, Scotland Yard has said.

The news came as the latest victim of the disaster was named as eight-year-old Mehdi el-Wahabi – one of a family of five all believed to have died in the fire.

“Mehdi was a calm and friendly young boy who loved his family very much. He was loved by staff and pupils at his school who held a beautiful memorial and made a plaque in memory of him,” read a statement from his relatives. His cousin, Senate Jones, added: “You made me laugh and smile every day.”

At a briefing on Tuesday morning, officers said individual charges were a possibility as well as charges relating to fraud, misconduct, health and safety breaches, and breaches of fire safety regulations.

DCI Matt Bonner told reporters: “This isn’t to be taken as indication that there is any evidence that we have found that would support these types of offences … We will keep an open mind, gather the material that exists and then make decisions once we have had an opportunity to fully review everything.”

The suggestion that individual charges could be brought was welcomed by campaign groups, which have demanded prosecutions against those they believe bear some responsibility for the fire.

After Scotland Yard raised the prospect of corporate manslaughter charges in July, the campaign group Justice 4 Grenfell said: “What we want is individuals named and prosecuted – you can have both, but we don’t want corporate manslaughter on its own. People implement policy, people make decisions, people took particular actions and those people are responsible.”

Khatija Sacranie, a lawyer and co-founder of Grenfell Legal Support, an organisation helping survivors navigate the multiple investigations, told the Guardian it was a “very welcome development”.

“This has been something that people have been calling for from the beginning,” she said. “There have been individuals specifically who they believe should be faced with charges. There is a feeling there is culpability that rests with people who are identifiable and this allows people to feel as if they have been heard. Until now there has been disregard for people’s feeling that they know why what happened happened and that the neglect started with individuals.”

At the Met police briefing on the state of the investigation, a senior officer apologised as she revealed that four cases of theft were suspected to have taken place while the tower was under 24-hour police guard.

Detectives were also investigating eight suspected cases of fraud involving people believed to have misrepresented themselves to benefit from the money made available to survivors, it was revealed on Tuesday. Two people have already been charged.

Met police commander Stuart Cundy said he had met survivors and relatives of the dead on Monday night and told them he believed the final death toll might be slightly lower than the 80 people previously posited.

He said 60 people had been formally identified and CCTV showed 240 people had left the tower between midnight and 8am on the night of the fire. He added that cases of fraud coming to light, including people reported missing turning out to be fictitious, could be one factor leading to the final death toll being slightly lower.

Nevertheless, he said, there could still be people with no social or family connection outside the tower, and not on any official lists, who could still be within the high-rise. He declined to say by how many the death count could fall.



Sacranie said there was a “great deal of dissatisfaction” among survivors at the police’s new position: “How can they possibly reduce the number when they know people are still missing?”



Cundy expressed his distress at the suspected cases of theft, at least one of which involved a significant sum of money, though the officers said they were open to the possibility that some of the missing items may have been placed in storage by the authorities responsible for the building.

“It would be fair to say that all of us … are just so disappointed – so disappointed that something like this could happen on the back of such a huge tragedy,” he told reporters.

Det Supt Fiona McCormack said: “We thought the 24/7 security would be sufficient. It hasn’t been and I am terribly sorry about that. But we have increased significantly the security at Grenfell Tower.”

Last week, the Guardian reported police were investigating claims of thefts at the Grenfell site and were considering the possibility that the thief could have been a police officer. McCormack refused to rule that out on Tuesday. “There is evidence that it may be someone outside but there’s also hundreds of police officers, contractors, scientists – everyone that’s been in and out,” she said.

So far, Bonner said, investigators have gathered 31m documents and sought specialist software to help sift through them and decide what it was necessary to look at in more detail.

The force has also identified 2,400 people to whom they wish to speak and taken more than 1,000 statements. Those include statements from 675 firefighters, 340 police officers and a similar number of ambulance staff involved in the emergency response up until 8pm on 14 June, he said.

Bonner added that his team had identified 336 companies and organisations linked to the construction, refurbishment and management of the tower – a significant increase in recent weeks. He said those included some with little or no involvement and others directly responsible for managing the building.

Officers said detectives would continue working in the tower into the new year, with a further police operation to begin once that phase was finished. Officers estimate that they are about halfway through the work in the tower.