Grenfell Tower fire in North Kensington - news and discussion

[Lurdan]

Peter Apps has been analysing parts of the Inquiry report in articles on his substack. Catching up with the last couple of weeks here's the first of them.

The Grenfell Tower Inquiry report: what it said about the social housing providers. It links to a number of previous stories on the Inside Housing website. Most of those links seem to work (at the moment) but the Inside Housing pages link in turn to other pages which are paywalled.

As before here is an archived version of Apps' article. The chains of links from it should all be working if people wish to follow them.

He goes through some of the report's criticisms of Kensington & Chelsea and the so-called TMO. Among other things he highlights the issue of door closers. Despite a Borough-wide enforcement notice having been served over the issue by the Fire Brigade, as well as a specific deficiency notice in respect of Grenfell Tower, the Council decided not to fund the necessary work.

Those who know the story of the night at Grenfell Tower will be aware that the missing self-closing devices on flat entrance doors were a key part of it. Doors standing open early in the fire allowed the rapid spread of smoke to lobbies, which meant many residents never had the chance to escape into a smoke-free environment. (...) On the night of the fire 77 of 120 doors in the tower didn’t have self-closers, and the residents of the tower paid the ultimate price. (...)

The major failure of the door closers is - in my view - a pivotal part of this story and it’s something that the wider discussion around Grenfell fails to properly appreciate. We already knew the degree of missed warnings from the oral evidence, but this report paints a shameful picture. It was a truly staggering failure given the many opportunities presented to put it right, and blame is rightly attached to all those involved: manufacturers Manse Masterdor, KCTMO management, Carl Stokes and RBKC.

He also discusses the question of criminal prosecutions:

I’m regularly asked about the potential for criminal prosecutions. I need to be careful about how I phrase this, for obvious reasons, so to be clear: being criticised in the report is not the same as criminal liability. Just because the panel has found wrongdoing, doesn’t mean a jury would. The standards of proof for an inquiry and a criminal trial are different and no one has been charged yet. They deserve the opportunity to argue their innocence if they are, so no one should be prejudged as guilty based on what is in the report.
Nonetheless, it is worth explaining the sort of offences under consideration for the Grenfell fire, and how they might relate here.

The police have said they are pursuing investigations into fraud and misconduct in a public office, as well as the more serious offences of manslaughter and the more basic breaches of fire safety rules or health and safety law. All could potentially be engaged by some of the behaviour described above.

Fraud, for example, requires someone to dishonestly make a false representation in order to gain for themselves. Lying on a job application can amount to fraud.

As for misconduct in a public office, the TMO staff involved in this story would be very likely to be considered public officials, under the definition set out in this case. To obtain a conviction prosecutors would then need to show they had carried out wilful neglect, breach of duty or misconduct and prove to a jury that it was “serious”. All of these are subject to long and complex legal definitions, with many different precedents, which I’m simply not qualified to assess and apply to these facts. But that is the job for prosecutors and detectives in deciding whether or not it is worth bringing that charge.

And then there is manslaughter. Here prosecutors would need to show that there had been an unlawful act (such as a breach of the fire safety order) or gross negligence (a negligent act, where there was a duty of care, and one which fell far below normal standards and came with an obvious risk of death). They would then need to prove that these actions were a cause of the deaths. It appears to me that this last bit - causation - is going to be the trickiest, given the number of different factors which contributed to the deaths at Grenfell. But in regard to the self-closers on fire doors in particular, you would feel the question can at least be asked by investigators and prosecutors.

 

[Lurdan]

Next one of Peter Apps' Substack articles about the Inquiry report.
The government must stop turning a blind eye to the industry-wide scandal the Grenfell Inquiry report exposes. It links to a previous story on the Inside Housing website. That link seems to work (at the moment) but it links in turn to other pages some of which are paywalled.

Here is an archived version of it.. The chains of links from it should all be working if people wish to follow them.

 

[Lurdan]

Catching up to date with Peter App's Substack articles about the Inquiry report here are the most recent two.

Approved Document B, Diagram 40, Judith Hackitt and the truth about Grenfell - Substack

This one links to a number of previous Inside Housing articles containing paywalled links.
Here is an archived version of it. The chains of links from it should all be working if people wish to follow them. There is a short YouTube video embedded in it - you will need to click on 'Watch on YouTube'

What can sometimes get lost in the technicality of this part of the Grenfell Tower saga is an extremely important story, which reveals a probable attempt at a cover up by the government in the days immediately following the Grenfell fire, is a root cause of the utter mess we’ve made of building remediation in the seven years since and is also a partial explanation of why our attempts at reforming the industry have so far gone wrong. (...)

The report criticises the system of functional headline regulations and prescriptive guidance in Approved Document B in the following terms. “One striking feature of the evidence was the extent to which many construction professionals have routinely regarded the statutory guidance as containing a definitive statement of the requirements of the Building Regulations,” it said. “Many construction professionals appear to be uncomfortable with the broad language of functional requirements… and want to be told what is expected of them and in any event many are not competent to translate the general language of the functional requirements into decisions about the choice of materials or methods of construction.”

This is a totally accurate criticism, in my opinion. But the inquiry’s fix for it is wrong. The inquiry recommendation is for an overhaul of Approved Document B, a warning that following it might not result in compliance with regulations and a statutory requirement to appoint a fire engineer to advise on higher risk buildings. But a better way might be to accept that the industry does indeed need “to be told what is expected of them”. This is a troubled sector of the economy where narrow margins and time pressures will generally win out. It is not going to transform into a highly competent, highly ethical, highly expert industry overnight and the fire engineers it appoints could end up being just as client-serving and slippery as the professionals involved in the Grenfell job in the worst cases.

To me, the whole miserable saga of Class 0 proves that there will always be a race to the bottom. Manufacturers will exploit the requirements of guidance as far as they can to get their cheapest product to market and value engineering will ensure that it is the cheapest product which wins the specification. This is the industry, and all the thought leadership pieces and conference events in the world won’t change that. So the answer should be to grasp the reality that the industry will ‘race to the bottom’ and lift the level which we set as the ‘bottom’. The lowest standards in guidance have to be appropriately safe. If this means setting them high, costing everyone a bit more money, forcing some products out of the market and moving to a more US-style prescriptive set of building codes, so be it. The best way to lift standards is to lift standards.

And this weeks article about fire safety consultants Exova
“Not only inadequate but positively dangerous” - what the Grenfell Tower Inquiry report said about fire engineers Exova - Substack

Archived version here.
The Inquiry's conclusion

Exova’s failure to identify the significant fire safety risks introduced by the refurbishment was not only inadequate but positively dangerous. In order to complete its work it should have identified the nature of the proposed rainscreen, and as a result its combustible nature, and also the unsuitability of the combustible insulation and window infill panels, as well as the absence of cavity barriers in key locations. We have therefore come to the view that Exova bears considerable responsibility for the fact that Grenfell Tower was in a dangerous condition on completion of the refurbishment.

 

[Lurdan]

Long article by James Butler in the London Review of Books

'This much evidence, still no charges' - (archived)

 

[brogdale]

Long article by James Butler in the London Review of Books

'This much evidence, still no charges' - (archived)

What a devastating opening para:

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

Catching up to date with Peter App's Substack articles about the Inquiry report here are the most recent two.

Approved Document B, Diagram 40, Judith Hackitt and the truth about Grenfell - Substack

This one links to a number of previous Inside Housing articles containing paywalled links.
Here is an archived version of it. The chains of links from it should all be working if people wish to follow them. There is a short YouTube video embedded in it - you will need to click on 'Watch on YouTube'

The report criticises the system of functional headline regulations and prescriptive guidance in Approved Document B in the following terms. “One striking feature of the evidence was the extent to which many construction professionals have routinely regarded the statutory guidance as containing a definitive statement of the requirements of the Building Regulations,” it said. “Many construction professionals appear to be uncomfortable with the broad language of functional requirements… and want to be told what is expected of them and in any event many are not competent to translate the general language of the functional requirements into decisions about the choice of materials or methods of construction.”

This is a totally accurate criticism, in my opinion. But the inquiry’s fix for it is wrong. The inquiry recommendation is for an overhaul of Approved Document B, a warning that following it might not result in compliance with regulations and a statutory requirement to appoint a fire engineer to advise on higher risk buildings. But a better way might be to accept that the industry does indeed need “to be told what is expected of them”. This is a troubled sector of the economy where narrow margins and time pressures will generally win out. It is not going to transform into a highly competent, highly ethical, highly expert industry overnight and the fire engineers it appoints could end up being just as client-serving and slippery as the professionals involved in the Grenfell job in the worst cases.

To me, the whole miserable saga of Class 0 proves that there will always be a race to the bottom. Manufacturers will exploit the requirements of guidance as far as they can to get their cheapest product to market and value engineering will ensure that it is the cheapest product which wins the specification. This is the industry, and all the thought leadership pieces and conference events in the world won’t change that. So the answer should be to grasp the reality that the industry will ‘race to the bottom’ and lift the level which we set as the ‘bottom’. The lowest standards in guidance have to be appropriately safe. If this means setting them high, costing everyone a bit more money, forcing some products out of the market and moving to a more US-style prescriptive set of building codes, so be it. The best way to lift standards is to lift standards.

And this weeks article about fire safety consultants Exova
“Not only inadequate but positively dangerous” - what the Grenfell Tower Inquiry report said about fire engineers Exova - Substack

Archived version here.
The Inquiry's conclusion

I'm guessing that one problem with this idea is that if the authorities are prescriptive about what is or isn't acceptable, rather than providing guidelines, then if there's another terrible fire and more people die, despite the property developer/housing association/council/whoever having constructed to the stipulated specifications, then national or local government might find themselves having some liability.

As things stand, if there are guidelines that are open to very wide interpretations, they can say that any problems are the fault/liability of the person(s)* who interpreted those guidelines.

* person(s) could be individuals, or could be 'legal persons' ie companies/organisations.

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

Peter Apps has been analysing parts of the Inquiry report in articles on his substack. Catching up with the last couple of weeks here's the first of them...

Those who know the story of the night at Grenfell Tower will be aware that the missing self-closing devices on flat entrance doors were a key part of it. Doors standing open early in the fire allowed the rapid spread of smoke to lobbies, which meant many residents never had the chance to escape into a smoke-free environment. (...) On the night of the fire 77 of 120 doors in the tower didn’t have self-closers, and the residents of the tower paid the ultimate price. (...)

The major failure of the door closers is - in my view - a pivotal part of this story and it’s something that the wider discussion around Grenfell fails to properly appreciate. We already knew the degree of missed warnings from the oral evidence, but this report paints a shameful picture. It was a truly staggering failure given the many opportunities presented to put it right, and blame is rightly attached to all those involved: manufacturers Manse Masterdor, KCTMO management, Carl Stokes and RBKC.

I live in an ex-council flat, I bought under Right to Buy and so I'm now the leaseholder of a housing association flat, because of stock transfer from the council to a housing trust, which several mergers later is now a social housing association/property developer of shared ownership homes and also profit-making flats and houses for market rent.

The estate is comprised of loads of low level blocks of flats, 4-6 flats in each two-storey block. There's three flats in my block. The ground floor flat's currently empty. They carried out some work a few months ago after the previous tenant left, including installing a new front door, which has a self-closing mechanism like you'd see on a fire door in an office block. Must admit, my heart sank at the thought of a self-closing mechanism slamming the door shut.

I've lived here 20-odd years and when I moved in, the internal doors had a smaller self-closing mechanism, like in the door frame, there was a kind of spring mechanism linking the doorframe and the internal door, which automatically closed the door after it had been opened. I quickly got annoyed with the loud slamming of doors and dismantled the mechanism. In the two decades I've lived here I've been in lots of other flats on this estate, and so I'm aware that lots of other tenants and leaseholders have either disconnected that self-closing mechanism on internal doors or even removed the internal doors altogether. It's quite common for flats to have no kitchen door or no sitting room door off the hallway corridor.

So when that says 'missing self-closing devices on flat entrance doors' I wonder how many doors had never had those devices installed, perhaps because any requirement to install them predated the fitting of the original door? Or maybe there had been a self-closing device on some doors, but maybe they had been removed by the then-current or previous tenants, or maybe they'd been dismantled so they were still there but not working?

It's all very well to stipulate that doors should have self-closing mechanism devices, but when you're living in a block of flats and you're either trying to be considerate and keep the noise down or many you're being harassed by a neighbour because of the noise coming from your flat, when you come and go from your home, or you go from one room to another at home during the course of everyday life, the reality is that many self-closing mechanism devices will be either removed or disconnected so that doors don't slam shut, because sound-proofing tends to be non-existent or shit, and some people are living on tenterhooks, waiting for neighbours to kick off about noise so will take measures to avoid pissing off neighbours who could otherwise cause them a lot of aggro and grief.

To a certain extent, it doesn't really matter what any regulations say, because human error, whether by accident or intention, is a potential factor that needs to be considered also.

Ironically, I need a new front door at some point, and one of the reasons I don't want one of those new ones with a self-closing mechanism is because my current front door, which is really old, has a safety feature that apparently isn't allowed on new doors. My current front door has a quick release door handle on the inside. You need to physically lock the door on exit or entry, it's not self-locking, but once the door has been locked with a key on the inside, you don't need a key to unlock it, you simply need to yank the door handle to one side.

I'm quite happy with that kind of door handle, because there was a fire in a children's home where I lived when I was a teenager and while no one was injured, I was left with only the school uniform I was standing up in as everything else was burned or smoke damaged. So I've always been a bit antsy about fire safety, and I like the idea of being able to quickly open the door to be able to escape, should the need arise, instead of having to fumble around to find keys and unlock the door.

So far as I'm aware, any regulations to change doors aren't retrospective, so I'd rather keep my old door, because I feel that's safer, from my perspective.

 

[Lurdan]

I'm guessing that one problem with this idea is that if the authorities are prescriptive about what is or isn't acceptable, rather than providing guidelines, then if there's another terrible fire and more people die, despite the property developer/housing association/council/whoever having constructed to the stipulated specifications, then national or local government might find themselves having some liability.

As things stand, if there are guidelines that are open to very wide interpretations, they can say that any problems are the fault/liability of the person(s)* who interpreted those guidelines.

* person(s) could be individuals, or could be 'legal persons' ie companies/organisations.

I don't think Apps is suggesting moving to a prescriptive building code system (although the US building codes are prescriptive and they seem to manage) but spelling out the minimum standards required to be achieved in guidance more carefully.

Our governments have scarcely 'escaped liability' by having a functional 'performance based' system. The costs of the Grenfell fire itself, the costs of remediating other buildings with non-compliant cladding systems, the cost of the Inquiry, the costs of implementing the response to it, etc. etc.

 

[two sheds]

Incredible that they haven't yet developed a self-closing door that doesn't slam but just shuts firmly.

 

[Lurdan]

I live in an ex-council flat, I bought under Right to Buy and so I'm now the leaseholder of a housing association flat, because of stock transfer from the council to a housing trust, which several mergers later is now a social housing association/property developer of shared ownership homes and also profit-making flats and houses for market rent.

The estate is comprised of loads of low level blocks of flats, 4-6 flats in each two-storey block. There's three flats in my block. The ground floor flat's currently empty. They carried out some work a few months ago after the previous tenant left, including installing a new front door, which has a self-closing mechanism like you'd see on a fire door in an office block. Must admit, my heart sank at the thought of a self-closing mechanism slamming the door shut.

I've lived here 20-odd years and when I moved in, the internal doors had a smaller self-closing mechanism, like in the door frame, there was a kind of spring mechanism linking the doorframe and the internal door, which automatically closed the door after it had been opened. I quickly got annoyed with the loud slamming of doors and dismantled the mechanism. In the two decades I've lived here I've been in lots of other flats on this estate, and so I'm aware that lots of other tenants and leaseholders have either disconnected that self-closing mechanism on internal doors or even removed the internal doors altogether. It's quite common for flats to have no kitchen door or no sitting room door off the hallway corridor.

So when that says 'missing self-closing devices on flat entrance doors' I wonder how many doors had never had those devices installed, perhaps because any requirement to install them predated the fitting of the original door? Or maybe there had been a self-closing device on some doors, but maybe they had been removed by the then-current or previous tenants, or maybe they'd been dismantled so they were still there but not working?

It's all very well to stipulate that doors should have self-closing mechanism devices, but when you're living in a block of flats and you're either trying to be considerate and keep the noise down or many you're being harassed by a neighbour because of the noise coming from your flat, when you come and go from your home, or you go from one room to another at home during the course of everyday life, the reality is that many self-closing mechanism devices will be either removed or disconnected so that doors don't slam shut, because sound-proofing tends to be non-existent or shit, and some people are living on tenterhooks, waiting for neighbours to kick off about noise so will take measures to avoid pissing off neighbours who could otherwise cause them a lot of aggro and grief.

To a certain extent, it doesn't really matter what any regulations say, because human error, whether by accident or intention, is a potential factor that needs to be considered also.

Ironically, I need a new front door at some point, and one of the reasons I don't want one of those new ones with a self-closing mechanism is because my current front door, which is really old, has a safety feature that apparently isn't allowed on new doors. My current front door has a quick release door handle on the inside. You need to physically lock the door on exit or entry, it's not self-locking, but once the door has been locked with a key on the inside, you don't need a key to unlock it, you simply need to yank the door handle to one side.

I'm quite happy with that kind of door handle, because there was a fire in a children's home where I lived when I was a teenager and while no one was injured, I was left with only the school uniform I was standing up in as everything else was burned or smoke damaged. So I've always been a bit antsy about fire safety, and I like the idea of being able to quickly open the door to be able to escape, should the need arise, instead of having to fumble around to find keys and unlock the door.

So far as I'm aware, any regulations to change doors aren't retrospective, so I'd rather keep my old door, because I feel that's safer, from my perspective.

I'm a Council tenant. As I mentioned way back at the start of this thread, the day after the fire I had a 'meet the contractors' event regarding proposed external works at my block. The Council subsequently decided to add new front doors into the contract with new self-closers. (Without actually 'consulting' us about them). Over the years since then they have added taking photos of the front door to the annual gas safety inspection so they can see if the self-closer is in place.

However the block I live in is balcony access - the front door opens directly to the outside - and is only five stories high. The issue at Grenfell was that it was 24 stories high and all of the lobbies and staircases were internal. Once some of the lobbies had filled with toxic fumes, making it difficult or impossible to escape, some people on upper floors were trapped and most of them died. (Self-closers aren't simply there to stop smoke getting into common parts of course. They are also there to keep a fire confined within one flat long enough to allow the fire brigade to get there).

At Grenfell, and in the other Kensington and Chelsea properties, there had been a door replacement contract in 2011. Most of the front doors to the tenanted flats in Grenfell Tower were replaced. The front doors to the 12 leasehold flats were not. After the fire the Met tested one of the undamaged replacement doors and found it only resisted flames for 15 minutes not the 30 minutes required. The Inquiry later heard that although the manufacturer had supplied a test certificate for the doors, it did not fully comply with requirements and in any case the installations at Grenfell didn't comply with the door system tested.

By the time of the fire its estimated that 77 of the front doors didn't have working self-closers. Some had been removed by tenants. Some had developed faults and had been removed by "TMO" staff and not replaced. Both the Council and the management of the "TMO" were aware of issues from the time of the replacement programme. Subsequently they had been served with enforcement notices by the LFB after a small fire at another block, Adair Tower. The Council were not prepared to spend the money to fix the issues.

Your circumstances are clearly different to those at Grenfell Tower. You live in a two storey building. Even if your staircase and landings are internal the issues of escape in the event of a fire are not comparable to Grenfell unless of course people have mobility issues.

Internal door closers (these used to be required on kitchens as the room where a fire is most likely to start) are a different matter to front doors. As you say they are commonly missing or non-functional. My kitchen door is permanently wedged open. I do however have functioning smoke and CO2 detectors. My understanding is that the requirement to fit self closers to internal doors was removed from regulations in 2010. (There may be different regulations for flats in multiple occupation).

If you have to replace your front door I assume your lease agreement requires you to get approval for the new door from your landlord. You can presumably get from them their requirements,

My front door closer doesn't slam shut. You can hear the door close but not exceptionally loudly.

If a closer slams shut I'd suggest it probably hasn't been fitted properly. Or is crap.

Not sure I understand the issue with the front door lock. My front door also has to be locked with a key when I go out. (This at least ensures I have my keys with me). From the inside there is a handle which opens it unless I have physically locked it, but this isn't done by using a key but by first lifting the handle to engage the bolts and then turning a small knob which locks them. In the event of a fire turning the knob to unlock the bolts would not be a significant impediment (or require me to find my keys).

 

[Lurdan]

Latest of Peter Apps' substack articles about the Inquiry report.
‘Its failures had catastrophic consequences’ - what the Grenfell Tower Inquiry report said about architects Studio E

Archived version here.

 

[Lurdan]

Next Peter Apps substack article - this one is about what the Inquiry report says about Harley Facades the "specialist" cladding contractor for the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower.
‘Ignorance, complacency and a failure properly to manage its staff’ - what the Grenfell Tower Inquiry said about Harley Facades

Archived version here

 

[LakieLady]

Ironically, I need a new front door at some point, and one of the reasons I don't want one of those new ones with a self-closing mechanism is because my current front door, which is really old, has a safety feature that apparently isn't allowed on new doors. My current front door has a quick release door handle on the inside. You need to physically lock the door on exit or entry, it's not self-locking, but once the door has been locked with a key on the inside, you don't need a key to unlock it, you simply need to yank the door handle to one side.

I had new doors and windows fitted to my house less than 4 years ago, and I specified a front door that doesn't need to be opened from the inside with a key and that's what I got. They must have been allowed that recently, although there may well be different regs for houses and flats. You don't need a key to lock it from the outside though, it slams locked like a Yale does, but you can double lock it with the key for an extra degree of security.

I have a bit of anxiety about being trapped in a burning building (since long before Grenfell) and the thought of having to find the key to get out in an emergency really gives me the heebies.

 

[Lurdan]

Minister loses Grenfell brief over industry hospitality - Times (archived)

This is Rushanara Ali who is Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

Ali confirmed she had relinquished the role as Grenfell and building safety minister, stating “perception matters” and that “trusted relationships between ministers and the Grenfell community are essential for [the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government]”.
She will remain a minister in the department and retain her responsibilities for homelessness and rough sleeping, along with several less prominent roles.

Last month The Sunday Times revealed that Ali, charged with the government’s response to the Grenfell scandal, had been a regular attendee of the Franco-British Colloque, an annual policy forum bringing together senior politicians, civil servants and business leaders from both countries.
Between 2012 and 2024 it was co-chaired by Pierre-André de Chalendar, the former long-serving chief executive and recently departed chairman of Saint-Gobain, a £33 billion French manufacturing company.
Until recently, Saint-Gobain was the majority owner of Celotex, the company that made most of the flammable insulation fitted on Grenfell Tower, in Kensington, west London.

Two weeks ago Ali attended a meeting with representatives of Grenfell United alongside Rayner. Sources have confirmed that during the meeting, the campaign group asked Ali to stop attending the Colloque. However, she is alleged to have refused, arguing it was an important event bringing together businesses and politicians from the UK and France. She is said to have been asked to leave the meeting.
A week later Rayner attended another meeting with Grenfell United, during which they are said to have issued her with an ultimatum to strip Ali of her building safety brief. A source familiar with the discussions said Grenfell United had threatened to go public with their demands if the government did not act within 24 hours. The decision to remove Ali was taken days later but not made public.

 

[Lurdan]

Peter Apps' next substack article about what the Inquiry's final report says about the various parties involved in the 'refurbishment' of Grenfell Tower.
This time Rydon the design and build contractor in charge of it.

‘It displayed a casual attitude to fire safety throughout the project’ - what did the Grenfell Tower Inquiry report say about Rydon
Archived version here

 

[Lurdan]

Peter Apps on what the Inquiry's final report says about the role of the Council and the "TMO" in the refurbishment.

'It assumed that others had considered the fire safety and failed to appreciate its own responsibility'
- What did the inquiry report say about RBKC and KCTMO's role in the refurbishment? - (Substack)

Archived version here

 

[Lurdan]

Peter Apps latest substack piece on the argument that the solution to the industry-wide problems exposed by the Inquiry can be solved by insisting people acquire qualifications.
The problem of the competence utopia

archived version

The fire engineering consultant was not a fire engineer. The lead architect had never refurbished a high rise before and the architect who worked up his plans into practical designs didn’t actually have the professional qualifications to call himself an architect. The cladding subcontractor appears to have been confused by the basic rules covering cladding and appointed a sports science graduate in his early 20s (who also happened to be the son of the company director) as project manager.

The main contractor lied about the experience and qualification of its team, all of whom were doing their roles for the first time and the building manager was too inexpert and naive to properly oversee the work of its contractors without specialist help (which they chose not to appoint for cost reasons). Even the building control officer had never done a complex job like this before and relied on the professionals to get it right without his input. Put all of this down in black and white and you can see why many people in the worlds of housing and construction are being told to go back to college, gain a qualification or prove their competency. (...)

On the face of it, this is hard to argue with - and I’m not intending to. What I do dispute is a view that sometimes crops up, pushing this argument one step further into the suggestion that a lack of competence is all that is going wrong and if we can simple make people more competent, all our problems will disappear. (...)

For me, the evidence of Grenfell does call for more competence. But it also calls for more accountability. It calls for larger and more immediate consequences for failure. It calls for more oversight and more transparency. And it calls for tighter regulations for an industry that has proved incapable of regulating itself. Some of the behaviour we’re talking about here is criminal. And just as you don’t fix shoplifting by sending perpetrators to college to learn the definition of statutory theft, we will not fix construction with qualifications alone.

 

[Lurdan]

The National Audit Office published a report today 'Dangerous cladding: the government’s remediation portfolio'. It paints an appalling picture of where things stand dealing with the building safety issues which came to light after the Grenfell fire.

The Guardian focuses on the report's mention of a fraudulent application for funding.

In autumn 2023 MHCLG became aware of a suspected fraud involving the potential loss of over £500,000 paid to an applicant on the BSF using the 80% up-front funding model. An external review of the case, commissioned by MHCLG in January 2024, (...) acknowledged the inherent risk of misrepresentation and collusion when providing funding “in an industry with known historical integrity issues."

The Times leads on the doubts in the report that Government will meet it's 2035 target for completing remediation of dangerous cladding on buildings over 11 meters high.
Fixing cladding on high-rise buildings ‘could take until 2037’ (archived)

It also details what the report sets out about the scale of the problem. And the eye watering estimated costs

Peter Apps has written a long piece on his substack.
£16.6bn and a million people: the scale of the building safety crisis laid bare

It contains links to some paywalled pages - here's an archived version with working links

Up to 60% of the total estimated number of dangerous buildings remain outside the 4,771 being monitored under the government’s programmes. The official estimate is that there are 9,000 - 12,000 impacted buildings, with a central estimate of 10,400. So that means up to 7,200 are not yet on the official radar at all. Most of these are medium-rise blocks (11m to 18m ). The government believes only 26% of the impacted buildings in this bracket have signed up to an official scheme. (...)

(...) on a conservative estimate, you still have somewhere between 750,000 and 1m people living in blocks impacted by the crisis (and that doesn’t even include people in below 11m buildings). (...)

The report says that some building owners remain reluctant to put their hand up and admit that they have an unsafe building, even though government cash is on the table for those that do so. The NAO said this may be because they are “reluctant to register with remediation programmes for fear of uncovering other, non-cladding-related problems that may be out of scope for government funding”. (...)

But even where buildings are identified in the programme, progress is slow. Of the 4,771 buildings known about remediation was complete on 1,392 (29%), in progress on 985 (21%), and yet to start on 2,394 (50%). This means we have completed work on something like 13% of the total affected buildings, and a large chunk of these come from the original programme to remove ACM (the cladding used on Grenfell) which kicked off right back in 2018. (...)

The £16.6bn which will be spent on removing dangerous cladding is, in the end, the cost of not having enough red tape. If we’d banned combustible cladding when we should have in 1999, this money would be doing something else. At least £5.1bn of it would be available for schools, hospitals and teachers and the rest would be driving economic growth or lining the silky pockets of shareholders in major housebuilders, depending on your worldview. And this, friends, is the cost of just one failed regulation, namely B(4) - External Spread of Flame. If we realise at some point (as we might) that B(3) - internal fire spread (structure) has also been screwed up the bill might well go even higher. So perhaps it is cheaper to regulate clearly and enforce the rules properly after all. Take that Adam Smith.

The NAO report discusses the cost to affected leaseholders:

The impacts of dangerous cladding have extended far beyond the immediate victims of the Grenfell fire, with many people suffering significant financial and emotional distress. As well as living with the fear of fire and costly bills for remediation, some residents in affected buildings have also paid for ‘waking watches’ to patrol buildings while waiting for cladding to be removed. Costs for waking watches vary widely from building to building, but in 2020 MHCLG reported median costs of £11,361 per building per month, or £137 per home, compared to £104 per home in 2023 (based on buildings that were receiving Waking Watch Relief funding from the government). While the Building Safety Act 2022 now protects most leaseholders from paying for remediation costs, many have experienced increases in insurance premiums (some as high as 500%, passed on through service charges), struggled to access mortgage finance, and been unable to move. MHCLG has taken steps to help make affected buildings mortgageable and insurable. In December 2022, the UK’s six largest lenders confirmed that they would lend on properties needing cladding remediation. MHCLG reported in July 2024 that the gap in the proportion of mortgage applications accepted on buildings with and without unsafe cladding had narrowed between December 2023 and April 2024. MHCLG does not hold data on how the affordability of these mortgages compared. In most cases, buildings with dangerous cladding are insurable but premiums remain high. MHCLG acknowledges that its planned interventions are insufficient to bring them down. (Page 12)

Obviously this takes no account of the costs to leaseholders of fixing building safety issues other than those related to cladding, although in practise building surveys have thrown up other expensive defects.

Back in March Apps wrote an article for Inside Housing about why remediation was taking so long, even for the minority of buildings which to date have engaged with the Government schemes.
Cladding remediation: why is progress so slow? - (archived version with working links)

and in July another Substack piece with three case studies of particular buildings where the remediation process has stalled or has not dealt with all issues
How Labour can fix three buildings and - by extension - the country (archived)

 

[Lurdan]

Peter Apps' next substack article on what the Inquiry report said about the bodies involved in the 'refurbishment' of Grenfell Tower is about the Building Research Establishment.

'Marred by unprofessional conduct, inadequate practices and a lack of scientific rigour': What the inquiry report said about the Building Research Establishment

Archived version here

Some excerpts:

The BRE then carried out a series of tests in 2001 on real world cladding systems, which included one on the material later used on Grenfell. This failed drastically, despite meeting the Class 0 classification. This meant it could legitimately be used on buildings, and therefore the BRE’s work had uncovered a dramatic threat to life. But while the BRE did draw attention to this in its research report to the department, it did not spell out the gravity of what it had discovered, noting only that “those matters might require further consideration”. The report said that given the obvious and severe risks, this limited advice “fell far short of what was required” and that its failure to make clear the risks “in suitably forceful terms bears some responsibility” for the significance of the tests being missed by government officials.

A theme throughout this period was appearing to play down or misunderstand the weakness of the ‘Class 0’ standard. We know from the evidence that major manufacturers, particularly of insulation products, liked this standard because it gave combustible materials a route to markets they would otherwise struggle to access. In one instance staff at the BRE actively removed a warning from testing guidance which specified that ‘Class 0’ was only relevant to the surface of a product. The panel said they were confident “commercial considerations” played a role in this decision. (...)

The report reserved particularly stern criticism for a report specifically on the risk of external fire spead which it was commissioned to write in the aftermath of the 2009 Lakanal House fire, and raised no major concerns about the use of combustible cladding products around the UK. “That particular piece of work… was seriously inadequate,” the report said. “It was deeply flawed in almost every respect, lacked any scientific value and purported to draw positive conclusions about the effectiveness of the regulations and guidance that could not sensibly have been reached on the basis of the work that had been carried out.” (...)

“In our assessment the operation of the project epitomised what had gone wrong in BRE’s relationship with the government; what was needed was proper independent advice, which the department did not want to receive,” the panel said. “The project thus helped to foster an attitude of complacency within both BRE and the government about the [official guidance].” (...)

The report was highly critical of the BRE’s role in the process - saying it was too close to its clients and that its staff offered too much advice to help them pass tests rather than providing a robust and scientific testing environment. A critical question has been whether or not the BRE’s staff (particularly burn hall manager Phil Clark) knew whether or not this was going on. Celotex’s witnesses said he did. He denied it. The report found robustly that he did. The panel said they were “satisfied that Mr Clark was aware of the design… and the reasons for it”. They went further to say that this individual failure was part of a wider culture at the BRE, which it said had “by degrees lost sight of the importance of maintaining a proper distance between itself and clients and of the need for scientific rigour and independence”.