Scotland Yard has warned it could take until the end of the year or longer to know for sure how many people died in the Grenfell Tower disaster, as police raised the number of people presumed dead to 80.
Police warned the death toll could rise further and said there were 23 flats in the tower where they had not been able to trace anyone alive.
Detectives added the criminal investigation had identified 60 firms involved in the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower, up from 12 last week, and expect that number to grow.
The update, which raised the official death toll by one, comes amid ongoing controversy about the speed at which authorities are releasing information about the blaze. Residents and survivors have said they believe the final number of fatalities will be far higher than the current estimates.
Detective superintendent Fiona McCormack, of the Met police, said a list of tenants provided to police by the Kensington and Chelsea Tenants Management Organisation, which managed the building, was “not accurate”.
She said: “We are many months from being able to provide a number which we believe accurately represents the total loss of life inside Grenfell Tower. Only after we have completed a search and recovery operation, which will take until the end of the year.
“What I can say is that we believe that around 80 people are either dead or sadly missing and I must presume that they are dead.”
She said police had checked every official record they could find and had even checked delivery records from fast food outlets to get an accurate idea of who had been inside.
“I do not want there to be any hidden victims of this tragedy,” McCormack said. “What I will only work on is facts, these are families we are dealing with, they are numbers to people, but they are not to me, they are victims to me and that is really essential.”
But she added that the intense heat from the fire meant some people may never be identified, and comprehensive searches through the debris on all the floors was expected to take to the end of the year or beyond, with the identification process taking even longer.
McCormack said: “We are many months from being able to provide a number that we believe accurately represents the total loss of life inside Grenfell Tower.
“Only after we have completed the search and recovery operation, which will take until the end of the year, and then months afterwards, when experts have carried out the identification process, will we be in a position to tell you who has died.”