How some of the new blocks built on the O2 Centre redevelopment site could look

• IT may be legal to have just one staircase in a high rise residential building (Fire risk in O2 development, March 3), but anyone who has been following the Grenfell Tower inquiry will know that legal does not necessarily mean safe.

The inquiry is now covering what happened when the government, determined to remove “red tape”, decreed that for each new regulation brought in, first one, then two, and finally three other regulations had to be abolished.

Fire safety was not exempted, regardless of the risk to life, so ambiguities and errors in the rules were not removed.

A fire expert from the Building Research Establishment asked if a high-rise building could legally have been clad in Semtex (!) covered with aluminium foil, felt he had to agree that it was a possible interpretation.

TONY WOOLF, NW6