Considering the Grenfell Fire Inquiry Report – Part 1: The persons and organisations responsible

The Grenfell Tower Inquiry panel has now submitted its report. It is now up to the government and the rest of us to consider it and what it means.

It was an extremely detailed report and did not pull its punches. I hope that Grenfell survivors are satisfied with its findings.

In this series of posts, I want to first take a look at the organisations singled out by the report for blame.  Then in Part 2 l Iook at the wider society attitudes which made these problems possible. In Part 3 I discuss what we can do about it.

So let’s start with

The companies providing the faulty materials

These were Arconic, Celotex, and Kingspan, and the report states that they had engaged in “deliberate and sustained strategies to manipulate the testing processes, misrepresent test data and mislead the market”.

Basically, they knew that their products were faulty but concealed this fact. It also looks as if they targeted countries to sell their shoddy products where regulation and enforcement was poor and where they could ‘get away with it’.

But why was the regulation in the UK so poor that they were able to do this?  I discuss this in Part 2.

The government

There is a clear failure to regulate properly stretching back to 1991 when a cladding fire in Liverpool first drew attention to the fact that unsuitable cladding could cause serious fires.

However, nothing was done after this and subsequent fires. The report is particularly critical of the Cameron Government and its drive to ‘deregulate’. A project taken up enthusiastically by his henchman, Eric (now Lord) Pickles.

David Cameron. Teflon Dave. Sauntering through life with his hands in his pockets, whistling. The damage that he has done to this country –

• Getting rid of the ‘green crap’
• Austerity
• Brexit
• And the obsession with deregulation.

So focused was the government and the housing department in particular, on deregulation and the destruction of ‘red tape’ that, the report finds, they ignored fire safety issues.  Which inevitably led to the Grenfell Fire.

Blame is also placed on the various regulators:

The British Board of Agrément (BBA)

This is a commercial organisation that certifies the compliance of products with the requirements of legislation).  The report finds that their “procedures were neither wholly independent nor rigorous and were not always rigorously applied.”  The report states that

“The dishonest strategies of Arconic and Kingspan succeeded in large measure due to the incompetence of the BBA,”

Local Authority Building Control (LABC)

Which issues “certificates verifying the compliance of construction products and systems with the Building Regulations and Approved Documents”.

There was, says the report, “a complete failure on the part of the LABC over a number of years to take basic steps to ensure that the certificates it issued in respect of them were technically accurate.”

The report goes on to say that they “failed to scrutinise properly the claims made for the products by the manufacturers and instead adopted uncritically the language they suggested. In short, it was willing to accommodate the customer at the expense of those who relied on the certificates”.

The National House Building Council (NHBC),

This organisation provides building control services to a large part of the housing construction industry but “failed to ensure that its building control function remained essentially regulatory and free of commercial pressures”.

The report goes on to say that “It was unwilling to upset its own customers and the wider construction industry by revealing the scale of the use of combustible insulation in the external walls of high‑rise buildings, contrary to the statutory guidance. We have concluded that the conflict between the regulatory function of building control and the pressures of commercial interests prevents a system of that kind from effectively serving the public interest. “

The Building Research Establishment

This, the report found, was “marred by unprofessional conduct, inadequate practices, a lack of effective oversight, poor reporting and a lack of scientific rigour” although “unprofessional behaviour of some of BRE’s staff was in part the result of a failure to provide them with adequate training in their responsibilities.”

The report goes on to say that “its failure to adhere robustly to the system of checks it had put in place, and an ingrained willingness to accommodate customers instead of insisting on high standards and adherence” led to their reports and certificates being misleading.

Saying also that

“The underlying problem was that the BBA failed to manage the conflict between the need to act as a commercial organisation in order to attract and retain customers and the need to exercise a high degree of rigour and independence in its investigations in order to satisfy those who might consider relying on its certificates. It accepted for inclusion in certificates forms of wording proposed by manufacturers that were wrong and misleading. Its lack of robust processes and reluctance to enforce the terms of its contracts enabled it to become the victim of dishonest behaviour on the part of unscrupulous manufacturers.”

The United Kingdom Accreditation Service (Ukas),

This organisation “did not always follow its own policies and its assessment processes lacked rigour and comprehensiveness “. Even when failings identified opportunities to improve, they were not always taken, the inquiry found, and “too much was taken on trust.”

Overall, this is quite a shocking catalogue of failure. How did we get to a place where this sort of failure was acceptable and seemingly unquestioned, for example, by government?

The Architects

This was a company called ‘Studio E’, which apparently failed to recognise anything wrong, relying on assurances from suppliers and anyone else concerned.  The report states that they have  “a very significant degree of responsibility for the disaster”.

This, according to a Guardian article is typical of architects who are described as ‘professional buck-passers’.  Studio E, according to the Inquiry report, “treated subcontractors and consultants as solely responsible for their work and assumed, without inquiry, that it met the required standards,”, betraying “a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of its obligations”.

The report concludes that Studio E’s failings are symptomatic of a “widespread failure among the profession” to properly understand the nature of the materials they are using. In short, architects have become so detached from the reality of construction, they simply don’t know what they’re building with any more. It has become a roulette game of choosing products from catalogues, within ever-tightening budgets, and hoping for the best.”

Maybe, therefore, along with all the other remedial work, there should be a serious review of the training, functions and responsibilities of architects.

The Local Authority and Tenant Management Organisation (TMO)

The Grenfell tower block was owned by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and was managed by the TMO.

Both are criticised by the report.

Clearly, there was no love lost between the Grenfell residents and the TMO.  Who persistently failed to respond to residents’ concerns about safety (or indeed, it seems, anything else).

The report finds that they considered some of the residents to be “militant troublemakers” and

“lost sight of the fact that the residents were people who depended on it for a safe and decent home and the privacy and dignity that a home should provide. That dependence created an unequal relationship and a corresponding need for the TMO to ensure that, whatever the difficulties, the residents were treated with understanding and respect.”

Going on to say that “for the TMO to have allowed the relationship to deteriorate to such an extent reflects a serious failure on its part to observe its basic responsibilities.”

So we have a number of issues here:

• Companies/businesses focusing on profit to the exclusion of everything else
• A Government focused on ‘deregulation’ and the destruction of ‘red tape’ rather than viewing regulation as what it should be – procedures to ensure the safety of the public and the end users of products and services
• Regulators who fail to regulate properly,
• Officials and regulators who do not have proper knowledge and training, and
• An attitude exhibited both by the Local Authority and its TMO, and the supplier, that ‘ordinary people’ do not matter.

I’ll take a look at these issues in Part 2.

Picture Credit.