Grenfell report: comprehensive failure over years put residents at risk
In the years running up to the disastrous fire at Grenfell Tower in June 2017, its residents were repeatedly failed by individuals, companies and elected officials that were supposed to ensure they had a safe place to live. This resulted in a concrete housing block being turned into a fire trap.
‘With Grenfell it’s hard to think of something that went right,’ says Emma Hynes, a barrister specialising in construction matters who was counsel to a seven-year public inquiry into the disaster. ‘Everything in the building failed.’
Shona Frame, a construction lawyer and Education Officer for the IBA Energy, Environment and Infrastructure Law Section, says that since the Building Safety Act was introduced in 2022 to raise standards following the Grenfell fire, she has seen ‘an enormous number’ of claims made against contractors, designers and others for historic fire safety defects. The Act allows parties to make claims for issues that occurred up to 30 years ago.
Retired Court of Appeal judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick, who led the inquiry, says in its second and final report published in September that decades before the Grenfell fire the UK government had many opportunities to address the risks associated with combustible cladding. From 2010 onwards, wholesale deregulation - which aimed to boost economic growth - created an environment in which urgent fire safety matters were pushed aside. Moore-Bick says the government resisted repeated calls from the fire sector to amend inadequate building and fire safety rules while pushing a ‘one in, one out’ policy regarding regulations, later extended to ‘one in, three out’, to slash red tape for businesses.
Moore-Bick found that three manufacturing companies – Arconic, Celotex and Kingspan – exploited weak regulations to sell products for the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower they knew were highly dangerous. They engaged in ‘systematic dishonesty’ and ‘deliberate and sustained strategies to manipulate the testing processes, misrepresent test data and mislead the market’.
With Grenfell it’s hard to think of something that went right. Everything in the building failed
Emma Hynes
Counsel to the Grenfell Inquiry
Moore-Bick says the companies succeeded largely because regulators were incompetent and more interested in keeping the companies as customers than holding them to account. The British Research Establishment and British Board of Agrément – both private bodies – are heavily criticised in the report for prioritising commercial interests over independence and rigour. This resulted in the testing and certification of products later used on Grenfell Tower that were misleading and provided a false sense of security.
Moore-Bick found that the plastic-filled cladding panels supplied by Arconic – which behaved like lighter fuel on the walls – were the main cause of the rapid fire spread. Hynes, a barrister at Gatehouse Chambers, looked at the testing and regulation of products as part of the inquiry. She says she struggles to have sympathy for the manufacturers that sold materials they knew were life-threatening. ‘For them to put their products on the market as they did and to this day some of them hold their hands up and say: “don’t look at us, you all knew about this […]”; for me that is the most reprehensible thing.’
Hynes believes the Building Safety Act 2022 and changes to fire regulations since the Grenfell fire don’t go far enough in closing gaps and loopholes in the law for unscrupulous manufacturers. ‘It seems to me the most reprehensible are the manufacturers and although there are substantial rules coming in regarding construction products and how they should be regulated and managed, I don’t think it goes far enough,’ she says.
Moore-Bick noted in the report that Approved Document B – statutory guidance for the construction industry on compliance with building regulations, including fire safety – still contains confusing language and doesn't provide the information needed to ensure that buildings are fire safe.
The businesses named in the report have denied wrongdoing in relation to the fire. Arconic says its cladding was ‘legal to sell in the UK’ and rejects any claim it sold unsafe product. Celotex, who made most of the building’s insulation, says the cladding system described in its marketing literature for the use of its materials met safety requirements and was ‘substantially different to that used at Grenfell Tower’. Kingspan says it made about five percent of the insulation and that its ‘historical failings’ were ‘not found to be causative of the tragedy’.
Moore-Bick says the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (TMO) – the social landlord of Grenfell residents – was motivated by cost-cutting during the refurbishment and didn’t pay enough attention to fire safety. The report describes the TMO as having a ‘persistent indifference to fire safety, particularly the safety of vulnerable people’ and was considered by residents as a ‘bullying overlord that belittled and marginalised them’. Moore-Bick says the TMO ignored repeated complaints from residents and the London Fire Brigade about fire hazards within the building.
The TMO – which no longer controls housing in the borough – said in a statement that it accepts the inquiry’s findings and is ‘deeply sorry’ for its role.
Moore-Bick also points out the shortcomings of others involved in the Grenfell Tower refurbishment, accusing them of failing to check if materials used complied with regulations and being more concerned with cost than fire safety. ‘Everyone involved in the choice of the materials to be used in the external wall thought that responsibility for their suitability and safety lay with someone else,’ he says.
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