Metropolitan Police detectives are investigating the London Fire Brigade's use of the "Stay Put Strategy" in the Grenfell Tower Fire disaster.

The investigation comes after it emerged at the Grenfell Tower Inquiry that it took nearly two hours of tacking the fire to abandon the strategy.

Firefighters arrived at the North Kensington tower block at around 1am on June 14 and ordered residents to stay put while they tackled the fire which started in a kitchen on the fourth floor.

The fire rapidly climbed the side of the building, spreading from floor to floor, but updated advice to evacuate the building was still not issued, the Mirror reported .

Police are considering health and safety offences as part of a wider criminal probe into the fire, in which 72 people died.

Kensington and Chelsea Council is also part of the force's criminal investigation into the fire.

However the Fire Brigades Union has said that tackling the fire was an "impossible situation" and branded the 24-storey tower block a "death trap".

Detective Superintendent Matt Bonner said the policy was part of investigators' "assessment of what happened and therefore falls within the investigation".

Commander Stuart Cundy clarified that the force was "duty bound" to look at a broad range of aspects from the night, which included the emergency services' response and preparedness.

Asked if senior officers could be charged with manslaughter for not telling people to leave, Mr Bonner said a prosecution could most likely fall under health and safety legislation.

Photos taken minutes apart show the fire spreading up the tower on June 14 last year

He said: "The LFB would, as any other organisation involved, have an obligation to conduct their activity in a manner that doesn't place people at risk. It doesn't mean that at the moment they have or they haven't, but that's where the legislation is most likely to arise if that was an eventuality."

An inquiry into the tragedy heard fire commanders marshaling the battle against the inferno had "no obvious and safe alternative strategy" than telling residents of the 24-storey block in Kensington, west London to stay put.

On the final day of opening statements at the inquiry into the disaster, the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) said both commanders and firefighters were left in an "impossible situation".

The refurbishment of the building has seen material installed that made it a "highly combustible death trap", which the brigade lacked training and procedures to tackle, the union said.

Seventy-two people died when a fire ravaged Grenfell Tower on June 14

Stephen Walsh QC, representing the LFB, told the inquiry: "It is a fundamental misunderstanding of the events of the fire and of fire service capability to assume the building's stay-put policy can be changed to a simultaneous evacuation at the stroke of a fire incident commander at whatever time."

"If there is no policy applied by the building owner which provides for a policy of simultaneous evacuation and there are no evacuation plans and there are no general fire alarms - what is an incident commander on the fireground to do?"

Martin Seaward, for the FBU, used his opening statement to ask "what alternative strategy might have been implemented" in the fast-moving situation.

Over 250 firefighters worked on extinguishing the Grenfell Tower Fire.

He said: "There remains no obvious and safe alternative strategy nor detailed plan."

An unprecedented number of firefighters with breathing apparatus entered the burning tower, Mr Walsh said.

He added: "Firefighters carried out many rescues of residents from flats and assisted many others that they encountered elsewhere in the building to make their escape down the stairs."

Many were left in "intolerable positions" and were forced to make decisions with "serious consequences whatever they decided to do", he said.

The Grenfell Tower Fire Inquiry continues.