A Grenfell firefighter has become the first to break rank to criticise the response to disaster, saying that the London Fire Brigade “could see this coming”.

Of the 72 people who lost their lives in the blaze up to 55 had been told to “stay put” by the fire service, it has emerged.

But despite growing criticism of the advice the fire service has always defended its position, saying that they could not have predicted what would happen when the flames tore through the cladding.

Firefighters have apparently been banned from talking publicly about the night, but one fireman has now spoken out to criticise his bosses.

The man, whose identity has been protected, said that in his experience they had had no training to deal with high rise evacuations.

He told Channel 4’s Dispatches: “There is one line in one of the policies I believe that says consider mass evacuation. But there is no guidance on how to do it. Michael Dowden [Incident Commander on the night] didn’t have the toolkit to tackle that fire.

"He didn’t have the policies to say ‘right, no that’s it, I’ve lost this, get everyone out of the building’. How on Earth were we put in that position?”