Kate Lamble is not a household name like Emily Maitlis or Andrew Marr, other former BBC journalists. Having risen through the ranks of specialist science journalism, Lamble has never presented a primetime show. For the past seven years, Lamble has covered the Grenfell Tower inquiry – listening to hours and hours of often heartbreaking testimony – until last week, two days after the inquiry published its final report, when she announced she had been made redundant and would be leaving the BBC.

Among more than 1,000 comments on her post on X, seen 1.5m times, was one from the survivors’ group Grenfell United. “It saddens us to see this huge error by the BBC, Kate has supported the Grenfell cause from the beginning and made our story more accessible to the public.” Lamble is understood to have decided to be “totally open” about her involuntary departure as she worried these people would think she had chosen to walk away.

The role of the media is far from central to Grenfell, but it is important – the tragedy was in large part about missed warnings and attention not being paid. Among the very many lessons to be learned, it seems that one – the importance of local and specialist journalism – has already been forgotten. And not just by commercial news outlets chasing........

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