How politics prevented the chance of stopping Grenfell

In Mr Pickles’ case, he was told to do several things to prevent a repeat of the Lakanal House fire or a more serious disaster. One of these was to carry out a review of Approved Document B – the official guide to building regulations and fire safety – “with particular regard to the spread of fire over the external envelope of a building”.

This was the chance, many believe, to prevent what happened at Grenfell Tower last June. It slipped away. In Mr Pickles’ response he said research was being carried out, and a new edition of the document would be published in 2016/17. And that was it.

Last week, the government finally published its redraft of the document, which it presents as a mere “clarification” of the existing guidance.

Amid a new typeface and a glossy new design, this clarification also removes what some believe to have been the fatal flaw in the previous (still in force) guidance.

Explaining this requires the use of some technical language.

The previous guidance, at paragraph 12.6, says that “external surfaces of walls should meet the provisions in Diagram 40”.

Diagram 40 (below) defines this for high-rise buildings as “Class 0 (national class) or Class B-s3, d2 or better (European class)”.

The cladding used on Grenfell – aluminium composite material with a polyethylene core – burns like solid petrol. But thanks to weaknesses in the way Class 0 is defined, it was certified by the British Board of Agrément as meeting this standard.

There are mountains of evidence – including a document bearing the signature of the chair of the government’s expert panel, Sir Ken Knight – that the industry believed Class 0 cladding was permitted for use on high rises by this passage in Approved Document B.

"The government was committed to a binary promise to remove twice as much regulation as it introduced"

Since Grenfell, the government has been adamant in saying that this is not true. Cladding, it says, was instead covered by paragraph 12.7, which applies to insulation materials and refers to “filler”. But this ignores the fact that rainscreen cladding panels of the kind used on Grenfell have no insulation function – they keep a building dry.

Nonetheless, despite denying they are a problem, in its ‘clarified’ draft guidance the government has quietly removed paragraph 12.6 and Diagram 40. Instead, it now simply says that all parts of an external wall must meet the higher standard of A2, in line with its forthcoming ban on combustibles.

Had the government reviewed the document when it was told to by the coroner for Lakanal House it may well have taken this step five years earlier – or at very least removed the ambiguity over whether or not paragraph 12.6 applied to cladding. The refurbishment of Grenfell was completed in 2016. There was ample time.

Industry representatives have, in fact, suggested this specific point was raised with the government and ignored.

Why did ministers not act? The answer, it would appear, is politics.

In this period, amid the ‘red tape challenge’ and the pledge to “kill” health and safety culture, the government was committed to a binary promise to remove twice as much regulation as it introduced.

If a civil servant had announced a review of Approved Document B, and said that it should involve a limit on the type of cladding the industry could use, they would have had to assess how much that would cost business.

"The department under Mr Pickles’ leadership was bullish in its approach to deregulation"

Then they would have had to remove other regulations to take out double that cost. No one would have wanted to take this step.

The department under Mr Pickles’ leadership was also bullish in its approach to deregulation. In 2014 responding to a question on why sprinklers had not been made mandatory, then-housing minister Brandon Lewis told parliament: “The Department for Communities and Local Government [responsible for housing] has gone further and removed an even higher proportion of regulations. In that context, members will understand why we want to exhaust all non-regulatory options before we introduce new regulations.”

Fire safety campaigners and professionals recall that in meetings with DCLG in this period, they were told that as fire deaths were coming down statistically there was no need for new regulation. But this allowed warnings to go unheeded.

That the changes published last week are being made after the disaster experts so frequently warned of only compounds the tragedy of Grenfell.

And as for Mr Pickles? A day after Dame Judith Hackitt’s report described the system of building regulation – which he was responsible for from 2010 to 2015 – as broken, Theresa May awarded him a peerage for his efforts.

Pete Apps, news editor, Inside Housing