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Grenfell Tower Inquiry diary week 36: ‘Is that not a very incurious approach for a fire risk assessor?’

Insight28.05.21by Nathaniel Barker

This week the Grenfell Tower Inquiry scrutinised the work of Carl Stokes, the man hired to carry out fire risk assessments for the block. Nathaniel Barker reports

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This week the #GrenfellTowerInquiry scrutinised the work of Carl Stokes, the man hired to carry out fire risk assessments for the block. @NatBarkerIH reports #UKhousing

With shock and ash still hanging in the air in the days after the terrible Grenfell Tower fire, Inside Housing revealed the identity of the person appointed to assess the building’s fire safety.

Mr Stokes, as sole employee of CS Stokes & Associates, was paid nearly £250,000 to undertake fire risk assessments (FRAs) for Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) between 2010 and 2017.

For those following the awful Grenfell tale, Mr Stokes and his work has been a sustained point of intrigue. This week we heard the full account of his dealings with KCTMO for the first time.

Thorny politics

Before we turn to Mr Stokes, on Monday the inquiry heard more evidence from Judith Blakeman (pictured above). Ms Blakeman has three roles in the story: she is a veteran Labour councillor whose ward covers Grenfell Tower; she was a member of the council’s housing and property scrutiny committee (HPSC); and she was a council-appointed board member of KCTMO.

First appearing last Thursday afternoon, her evidence painted a picture of her trying unsuccessfully to raise concerns about safety issues at the tower, met with only with what she described as “bland assurances”.

This week we heard about how that came to a head on 11 May 2016 at a meeting of the HPSC. The committee was due to discuss an internal report on the Grenfell refurbishment, in which Ms Blakeman said KCTMO “commended” itself and its contractor.

Having seen the report at an earlier KCTMO board meeting, Ms Blakeman emailed fellow HPSC committee members ahead of 11 May outlining concerns. Shortly before the meeting began, Robert Black, chief executive of KCTMO, emailed the HSPC chair pointing to a “conflict of interest” on Ms Blakeman’s part due to her three roles and warning she was “in breach of her duties as a director of KCTMO”.

At the subsequent meeting, the inquiry heard, she was “bullied” by Mr Black and HSPC chair Quentin Marshall into sitting in the public gallery “fuming”. Such a direct intervention in the council’s democratic scrutiny process by Mr Black, as an official, may raise eyebrows for some in the housing sector.

At the end of her evidence, Ms Blakeman took the unusual step of interrupting inquiry lead counsel Richard Millett QC as he thanked her for her participation. “No, you’re supposed to ask me what I have to say first,” she interjected.

After expressing regret at having not pushed harder with the Grenfell Pathway project she helped set up in a bid to learn lessons from the refurbishment before the fire, she added: “Well I’m going to sit here with tears in my eyes and say how terrible the fire was because I watched the fire, I knew over 30 of the people – including children – who died in that fire. And that fire should not have happened… one reason why it happened was because the council, first of all, did not take [resident] Mr Daffarn seriously and secondly they then decided to vilify me as well. They didn’t listen to the residents, and they should have done.”

Mr C Stokes ACIArb, FPA Dip FP (Europe), Fire Eng (FPA), NEBOSH, FIA BS 5839 System Designer, Competent Engineer BS 5266, IFE Assessor/Auditor (FSO)

Mr Stokes’ (pictured above) evidence lasted a full three days this week, and he is due to come back for another stint in the witness stand after the Bank Holiday weekend. As well as a forensic examination of his work at Grenfell Tower, we were afforded a significant glimpse into him as an individual.

Having worked for the fire service – chiefly in audit – for two decades, Mr Stokes retired in 2009 and became a fire risk assessor. His nine-year career, dominated by work with KCTMO, came to an end in May 2018 after his insurer refused to renew his policy.

One notable habit of Mr Stokes’ was calling Mr Millett “sir”. That mark of respect was not enough to spare him from some uncomfortable moments under the counsel’s microscope.

The earliest of these came when it emerged that he had written on his CV submitted to Salvus, a consultancy which gave him his first job as a fire risk assessor, that he had “experience of undertaking risk assessments and audits of the common parts of high-rise residential tower blocks”. He admitted this week that he had never actually produced an FRA for a high rise before this point.

Shortly after, it was revealed that he had added a series of letters to his name indicating qualifications, called ‘post-nominals’, on a sample FRA submitted to KCTMO before it offered him a contract in summer 2010. The document described the sample FRA as having been completed by “Mr C Stokes, ACIArb, FPA Dip FP (Europe), Fire Eng (FPA), NEBOSH, FIA BS 5839 System Designer, Competent Engineer BS 5266, IFE Assessor/Auditor (FSO)”.

But it emerged that these post-nominals had either been invented by Mr Stokes entirely or referred only to training courses he had been on. “There was never anything else to deceive or even highlight anything else, but these are courses and competencies,” Mr Stokes insisted.

At times Mr Stokes appeared to be struggling to articulate himself or properly understand Mr Millett’s questions – meaning the cross-examination was at times stunted, with inquiry chair Sir Martin Moore-Bick having to interject to mediate more frequently than usual. This dynamic gave rise to some especially acerbic comments from Mr Millett.

Asked at one point how he could have been sure that disabled people in Grenfell Tower would be protected in a fire given that he had not made any relevant enquiries, Mr Stokes replied: “Because I did enquire because I wasn’t given positive information to say there was anyone in there that did require…” Mr Millett cut him off. “With great respect Mr Stokes, that answer makes no sense… that’s not an enquiry is it?”

Tellingly, asked about a recurring typo in one of his FRAs – “imputed” for “inputed” – Mr Stokes admitted: “To be honest, if it hadn’t have come up as spellchecker I wouldn’t have looked at it, no.”

“Well that would explain a number of the infelicities which are repeated,” Mr Millett remarked.

And later when Mr Stokes claimed that “appease” means “help”, having used the word in an email to KCTMO about the London Fire Brigade, Mr Millett deadpanned: “I think there may be people in history who might regard appeasement as something slightly different from that.”

Cut-and-paste technique

Having been introduced to KCTMO through his work at Salvus, Mr Stokes went on to be contracted directly through his newly established company, ostensibly for less money. He was vague this week on the tendering process, being unable to recall exactly when his agreement with KCTMO was reached, and it appears his one-year initial contract was simply left to roll from 2010 on to the end of 2017.

This week, Mr Millett (pictured above) went through the FRAs Mr Stokes conducted on Grenfell Tower with a fine comb.

A recurring feature was that Mr Stokes would cut-and-paste significant portions of text between FRAs – even for different buildings. That was where the typo discussion cited above came up. In one particularly embarrassing moment for Mr Stokes, the inquiry heard that three of his FRAs for Grenfell included a paragraph discussing pigeon netting and flat balconies – neither of which were in place at the tower. That, in Mr Millett’s words, was a “slam dunk”.

There were other apparent shortcomings, too. For instance, Mr Stokes repeatedly misidentified firefighting lifts in Grenfell Tower, despite the fact the apparatus he was referring to did not meet the relevant standards.

His FRAs also stated that “TMO employees will arrange for a general evacuation of the whole building, at anytime if this is appropriate to do so”, though it is not clear what this assertion was based on.

Mr Stokes claimed this week that this sentence referred to a different type of situation, such as a leak flooding flats. Asked by Mr Millett if it was true that he never considered the idea of a ‘Plan B’ evacuation in an emergency, Mr Stokes said this “would be the fire service’s responsibility”.

Disabled residents

Carl Stokes completed the final FRA for Grenfell Tower in June 2016

A major point of discussion on Wednesday was disabled people living in Grenfell Tower. Many of those who died in the fire had mobility issues and, in some cases, were living high up in the building. This lead lawyers for the bereaved and survivors to describe the blaze as a “landmark act of discrimination against disabled and vulnerable people”.

Mr Stokes told the inquiry that he relied on KCTMO to provide him with information about residents in its buildings who would need extra help to evacuate in an emergency – and he proceeded on the basis that if they did not tell him of anyone in this category, that was because there was no one.

This approach meant that in seven years carrying out FRAs across KCTMO’s 9,000-home stock, he only ever identified two residents with a disability, neither were in Grenfell Tower. His FRAs therefore did not flag this as an area of risk.

For context, more than half of the social rented households in England include one or more people with a disability or long-term illness.

This is was where another recurring theme continuously appeared: Mr Stokes would assume that KCTMO was doing the right thing from its own end, rather than directly checking. So instead of asking for information about disabled residents when undertaking an FRA, he would consider the “onus” to be on KCTMO, or the occupier, to tell him.

“Is that not a very incurious approach for a fire risk assessor?” Mr Millett demanded.

Mr Stokes thought for a moment. “No, I don’t think so,” he replied.

But then we were led to wonder whether this incuriosity was something less forgivable. In December 2012, the London Fire Brigade asked KCTMO for “assistance to identify vulnerable persons” in their stock to put together a business case for installing sprinklers. Mr Stokes advised: “If you identify anybody now questions like why were they not including in the buildings FRA spring to mind. A good response I believe would be thank you for this information if we find anyone in the future we will let you know.”

He denied this week that he was suggesting to “keep quiet about it” in order to avoid prompting difficult questions from the fire brigade.

Fire doors

Most of Thursday was taken up by questions about flat entrance front doors. These were a key aspect in which the fire safety measures at Grenfell Tower failed on 14 June 2017, with investigations since finding that on the night at least 64% of flat entrance fire doors in the block did not have a working self-closer. Mr Stokes told the inquiry that he was “very surprised” by that figure.

Indeed, in the last four FRAs he conducted for Grenfell Tower, Mr Stokes only identified one flat entrance door with a missing or faulty self-closer. The inquiry heard that he used a “pot luck” approach of knocking on residents’ doors in order to be let in to check a sample of self-closers. But he refused to agree with Mr Millett that this system was “inadequate” and that a “suitable and sufficient” one would have led to him spotting more of the endemic fire door problems in the tower.

The thing is, Mr Stokes had repeatedly discussed the issue of fire door self-closers with KCTMO – at one point going out of his way to query a “reoccurring fault” with the newly installed doors made by Manse Masterdor. It was something he admitted being concerned about and he warned KCTMO about the dangers of self-closers being removed.

But, again, the inquiry established that he assumed KCTMO was fixing issues with self-closers as and when they came up, including in one case where a handyman had been removing them when they failed. Mr Millett put it to Mr Stokes that this was a “dangerous” assumption, to which he retorted: “It’s no more dangerous than I check it and two days after I check it, it fails.”

Questions for KCTMO

Picture: Jon Enoch

After Mr Stokes’ lengthy cross-examination is over, the inquiry is set to hear from Janice Wray, former health, safety and facilities manager at KCTMO, who was his primary point of contact.

Some of the evidence we have heard from Mr Stokes may give rise to hard questions for Ms Wray and her KCTMO colleagues.

For example, why were the ostensibly obvious errors in the FRAs Mr Stokes was submitting to KCTMO – such as on disabled residents – never picked up?

Asked at one point whether it ever felt like he was asking KCTMO to fix the same issues repeatedly, Mr Stokes said: “Yes.”

As part of the last FRA he carried out for Grenfell Tower in June 2016, Mr Stokes recommended 43 “high-priority” actions which he considered to be statutory breaches and said work to fix these should start within three weeks. Four months later, 23 were still left outstanding. He described his “frustration” at the lack of progress.

And, shockingly, late on Thursday we heard that Mr Stokes had been put “under pressure” by senior KCTMO staff to downgrade an action to fix fire doors at Adair Tower in 2015 from “high priority” to “strong advice”.

The inquiry will want to get to the bottom of KCTMO’s whole approach to fire safety in the run up to June 2017.

Grenfell Tower Inquiry phase two: weekly diaries

Module one: the refurbishment

Week one: A vivid picture of a broken industry

After a week of damning revelations at the opening of phase two of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, Peter Apps recaps the key points