After the Independent Committee’s report on the Wang Fuk Court fire and the subsequent responsive measures were announced by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government last week, some suggested that the report came “too late”, and that accountability was “too light”. Such criticisms are casual and cannot be compared with objective facts.

If we look at the Grenfell Tower fire in London — a disaster similar in nature and with heavy casualties — the speed of the investigation and depth of accountability implemented in the Wang Fuk Court blaze stand out.

The Grenfell Tower fire occurred in June 2017 and claimed 72 lives. The inquiry report was not published until September 2024, or more than seven years after the incident happened; the police criminal investigation stretched across nearly a decade, with a charging decision expected only by 2027 — on the eve of the 10th anniversary — and, if the case goes to trial, possibly not until after 2029. A community waited almost 10 years to see the outline of accountability, and groups representing the bereaved families said the process had dragged on too long.

By contrast, the Wang Fuk Court fire occurred in late November 2025. The Independent Committee completed its investigation in less than a year, holding 30 hearings and examining over a million documents, and the SAR government published its inquiry report running to more than 1,000 pages last week.

The government announced the start of accountability procedures on the very day the report was made public. Less than a year passed from the tragedy to the final report and the activation of the accountability mechanism. Faced with a disaster of this magnitude and complexity, the response was, by any measure, remarkably swift — especially when compared to incidents of similar nature and complexity, such as the Grenfell Tower fire, which usually took years to complete investigation and launch subsequent action.

Beyond mere efficiency and promptness, what matters more is the depth and standard of accountability. One lesson of the Grenfell Tower fire is that a long gap opened between inquiry and prosecution, and the pursuit of institutional failures unfolded only slowly after the report was published.

The Wang Fuk Court fire is different: On the same day the report was published, the government advanced three tracks in parallel — criminal accountability, administrative accountability and acceptance of political responsibility — rather than a single-track process of “investigate first, accountability later”.

On the criminal side, investigations and prosecutions involving the contractor and engineering consultant had long begun, and the Independent Committee’s report provided a firmer factual basis for prosecution.

On the administrative side, the government invoked, for the first time, a two-tier investigation mechanism under the Departmental Heads Accountability System. The chief executive referred the four departments named in the report — the Housing Bureau’s Independent Checking Unit, the Buildings Department, the Fire Services Department and the Labour Department — to the Public Service Commission to investigate alleged deficiencies and failings in the discharge of duties over fire risks associated with the works at Wang Fuk Court, requiring completion within three months. The investigation is estimated to cover 40 to 50 people, and the most serious sanction may be dismissal.

The activation of this mechanism is itself significant: It’s not an internal self-review by a department, but an independent inquiry conducted by an external statutory body at a standard higher than an ordinary internal investigation, and it expressly extends to the departmental-head level.

On political accountability, it is inappropriate to judge simply by the fact that “only one principal official resigned”. Then-housing secretary Winnie Ho Wing-yin resigned, becoming the first principal official under the accountability system to leave office by taking political accountability for a disaster.

Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu made clear that the resignation decision took into account a range of factors: the official’s role in the incident, the relationship between her policy portfolio and the incident, the performance of subordinates, and the future reform tasks the political team must shoulder. The investigation did not find any personal wrongdoing by Ho.

A resignation not premised on personal fault is not common in Hong Kong’s past accountability practice. The symbolic and substantive significance of Ho’s resignation should not be underestimated. To equate political accountability with “the more officials step down, the better” would confuse the boundaries between political accountability, administrative responsibility and legal liability, and would depart from the principles of handling matters in accordance with the law and ensuring that the punishment fits the responsibility.

More importantly, accountability has not proceeded in isolation. While the investigation was under way, the government advanced aftercare resettlement and institutional reform in parallel: Affected residents have “a roof over their heads, money in hand, and someone by their side”, and more than 99 percent of owners have accepted the government’s long-term housing arrangement.

In response to deep-seated problems in the building maintenance sector such as bid rigging and overlapping regulatory responsibilities among departments, the government launched systemic reform rather than waited until the inquiry report was published.

This parallel model of “aftercare, investigation and reform being carried out at the same time” stands in sharp contrast to the long wait after the Grenfell Tower fire. It also shows that the criticism of “accountability coming too late and too light” overlooks the fact that accountability is a multitrack, ongoing process, not a single event scored by “how many people step down”.

The author is a law professor, president of the Association for the Promotion of Rule of Law, Education and Technologies and vice-president of the Hong Kong Basic Law Education Association.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.