I think the BBC are right to highlight the delay in sending an aerial appliance in their Newsnight program, and maybe the radio problems. But water problems will always be an issue on a job like this.
Aerials (high reach appliances) used to attend automatically right across central London - including the Lancaster West Estate where Grenfell is located. Then bean counter at HQ dusted off his abacus & did some maths. He made some pretty graphs and established that these expensive machines were rarely used to rescue anyone or even put fires out.
What wasn't considered was we used to use routinely them for gaining entry into buildings, for observation towers (where no fire was showing, the 100ft ladder would give a birds eye view) and would often extend them against buildings to act as an emergency escape ladder for breathing apparatus crews working a fire inside.
But these big machines 'not doing much' was seen as 'inefficient use of resources' by promotion hungry managers trying to make a name for themselves. So they were removed from most 'predetermined attendances' and were only available upon request. There was a culture of not dragging one out to act as an observation tower or any of the routine jobs - mainly due to the time delay. So their call rate fell through the floor. The results were devastating. 40 years ago when I stared, in the nine stations that covered the busy west end of London, there was an aerial at 6 of them: Paddington, Manchester Sq, Euston, Soho, Chelsea and Kensington. Now there's only two (Paddington & Soho).
LFB bosses said that advances in technology and building design meant aerials were less important. Its true, that Canary Wharf and similar new builds will not benefit greatly from aerials, but the million of Londoners and visitors in the thousands of single staircase buildings (including huge mansion blocks of flats, over height older flats over shops and 5 storey single staircase hotels) were most certainly placed at risk by these cuts.
Then think about very large single storey warehouses. Aerial appliances rarely attend as routine in London. The same bean counters would never agree. These buildings often one huge compartment. Fires can spread easily and steel portal frames tend to collapse rapidly. Its not a good place to commit crews. But early intervention using an aerial to break a hole in the roof to let smoke and hot fumes escape can save £millions of loss and countless livelihoods. I am sure London will be awash with huge Bronto Skylifts soon as a knee jerk reaction. They will be able to reach the moon, but will weigh 70 tonnes and be housed on 5 to 8 axles so won't actually be able to get anywhere other than main roads.
As for the lack of water, it is the case that residential areas will have relatively small diameter water mains. They are only needed to fill baths and washing machines on an average day. You cannot expect that main to supply perhaps 4 to 6 fire service jets without falling over. I work in central London in a very built up city centre area and we have a 12" main with double hydrants outside. Even that would struggle. Without installing huge mains everywhere 'just in case', there's not much that could be done.
As for radio problems. I hope the Public Inquiry will look at this. Notwithstanding that there were probably up to 400 firefighters present at times so its likely that radio airtime would be busy. But when technology allows me to send realtime video & speech from my mobile phone in London to a beach in Sydney, it is about time 999 services could talk to each other better within a sq mile of London