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Grenfell Tower Inquiry diary week 46: ‘I think I’ve been very, very clear that is completely wrong’

Insight10.09.214.00 PM by Peter Apps

This week the inquiry heard further expert evidence about fire risk assessor Carl Stokes’ actions, as the section of its work covering the management and maintenance of the tower concluded. Peter Apps reports

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Grenfell Tower Inquiry diary week 46: ‘I think I’ve been very, very clear that is completely wrong’ #UKhousing

Dr Barbara Lane (pictured below) made her fifth appearance at the inquiry to present her report for this module, primarily analysing the work of Mr Stokes.

Like many of the experts in this phase of the inquiry’s work, Dr Lane was being asked to judge Mr Stokes’ work against the hypothetical standard of the ‘competent risk assessor’.

She was also repeatedly asked whether various failures rendered his assessments “not suitable and sufficient” – the wording used in fire safety legislation as the requirement for risk assessments.

Her evidence will be tricky for the inquiry to weigh, as it contrasted in several important areas with another expert witness, Colin Todd, who was notably kinder to Mr Stokes. It will be up to inquiry chair Sir Martin Moore-Bick and his panel to decide which evidence they prefer.

Below is a summary of some of the key issues Dr Lane discussed.

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“I can’t say to a client, ‘I haven’t looked at the wall, here’s hoping it doesn’t cause extensive fire spread’”

Should the risk assessment have taken account of the external wall? This is a fundamental question, not just at Grenfell, but in other blocks where dangerous materials have been found in the external walls of buildings that have been risk assessed as safe for years.

A classic view has been that external walls fell outside the scope of these statutory assessments, with many believing they only covered the internal, common parts of the building: the stairs, entrance, lobbies and so on.

In fact, the government has recently passed legislation that brings the outside wall into the scope of risk assessments.

But Dr Lane’s evidence was that in a building like Grenfell, it should always have been a consideration.

Where the external wall “abuts” the internal compartmentation, she said, this makes the external wall “a collective protective measure” and therefore a relevant concern for the risk assessor.

In more simple terms, this means that if reliance was being placed on the external wall to stop fire spreading between flats then it should have been assessed, especially if a stay put policy was in place.

“I can’t say to a client, ‘we’ve sorted out your general fire precautions for this high-rise residential building, I haven’t looked at the wall, here’s hoping it doesn’t cause extensive fire spread,’” Dr Lane said. “Because… if it supports fire spread, I’m unable to say to the responsible person the classic evacuation strategy [stay put] remains suitable.”

Was this a view held widely in the industry before Grenfell?

“All I can say to you is that my experience is from 2013 I was being asked by people with existing buildings and experiencing difficulties on my own projects with the hazard the external wall posed,” she said.

This evidence contrasted with Mr Todd, who told the inquiry his view was that the external wall was outside the scope of assessments and that this view was held “very close to universally” in the profession.

‘When he took the decision to remove it as a hazard… I think that was reckless’

So what of Mr Stokes said about the cladding? Dr Lane was critical, but was careful to limit her criticism to the precise nature of what happened at Grenfell.

In 2014, Mr Stokes raised the cladding as a potential hazard. But in his assessment in June 2016, he took it out of the hazard list and instead said it was “fire rated”.

This, in Dr Lane’s view, was a serious error. “When Mr Stokes made the decision to incorporate the cladding into his risk assessment.… as far as I’m concerned, he should have read the fire strategy to understand what the materials were, and before he declared it fire rated, which is a specific performance description, he needed to have information about the basic products used in the external wall to allow him to make that statement,” she said.

The phrase ‘fire rated’, she explained, implied a specific type of fire performance (the ability to resist fire) which is achieved through specific testing, which the walls had never been subjected to.

She said a better option for Mr Stokes would have been to leave the cladding categorised as a potential hazard and leave it to the building manager, Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO), to seek suitable professional advice.

Simply relying, as Mr Stokes did, on the fact that the product had been signed off by building control was not good enough, Dr Lane said, as he did not know what building control had done to answer the question.

Mr Stokes also emailed KCTMO in response to a direct query in April 2017 to tell them the cladding “complied with building regulations”. This too was on the basis that it had been approved by building control.

Dr Lane called this “professionally reckless”. “When Mr Stokes himself took the decision to raise it as a hazard and took the decision to remove it as a hazard and made it a statement of performance, without any information or attempting to read information to put himself in that position, I think that was reckless,” she said.

Did it fall below the standards of a competent risk assessor? “He fell below the standards of a risk assessor who decided to incorporate the cladding into their risk assessment,” she said.

‘I think I’ve been very, very clear that is completely wrong’

A crucial question in this module of the inquiry has been the failure to identify residents with disabilities and the absence of any plans for their evacuation.

Dr Lane’s firm view was that it is a legal requirement for all residents to be provided with a ‘means of escape’ and that this includes people with disabilities.

She said this applied equally in a building which operated a stay put policy.

“I think you’ve heard plenty of evidence here that there’s this common understanding that stay put means no one leaves the building in the event of a fire, and I think I’ve been very, very clear that that is completely wrong,” she said.

Stay put, she explained, still requires those who are in the flat where the fire starts (and any which become affected by it) to leave the building. But, she said, this is not something the industry has always been good at.

“I am happy to say, based on my experience for a very long time, that providing protection or evacuation to vulnerable persons is not something that is consistently dealt with or well received, certainly in my work,” she said.

This is a major area in which Dr Lane and Mr Todd disagree. Mr Todd told the inquiry that it was “not practicable” to provide evacuation plans for disabled residents in blocks of flats.

Dr Lane pointed to official guidance documents (British Standard 9991 and PAS 79) which specifically indicate evacuation of disabled residents must be planned for, without reliance on firefighters.

This touches on another area where Dr Lane and Mr Todd disagree because Mr Todd (who authored PAS 79) told the inquiry that it was actually supposed to apply to commercial buildings and was less suitable for residential.

But this was not something made clear by the document herself, and Dr Lane said she was not aware of it. “I think that if an author of a document thinks that, they should say it at the front,” she said.

These standards contrast with another guidance document that was published by the Local Government Association (LGA) in 2011 and written by Mr Todd’s consultancy.

This guidance, which was endorsed by government and influential in the housing sector, said it was “usually unrealistic” to provide evacuation plans for disabled or vulnerable residents.

Dr Lane said she could not “reconcile” this with other the standards. “By not making any other arrangement, a risk level is fixed in the building for any vulnerable person who cannot use [the stairs],” she said. “I am not able to explain the thinking or the consideration of risk acceptance and risk levels that went into the agreement to write that text.”

‘If they knew that system was obsolete, they should have corrected the risk assessment and returned it’

So what about what Mr Stokes actually did to identify residents with disabilities? In four risk assessments between 2012 and 2016, he included a very similar passage which said there was “no evidence” of residents with a hearing impairment.

It also said KCTMO was in the process of gathering this information on its ‘TP Tracker’ database and his assessment would be updated if any residents were identified as a result.

The problem? This tracker system was discontinued from September 2013 and Mr Stokes never checked or clarified with his client to see what had happened to it.

Dozens of disabled and vulnerable residents in Grenfell Tower were left unidentified.

Dr Lane was critical of Mr Stokes and KCTMO for this.

She said a reasonably competent risk assessor would have ensured the information contained in the assessment was “current and up to date”. She also said KCTMO should have noticed the reference to the obsolete system in Mr Stokes’ reports and addressed it.

“I think the reader of the fire risk assessment, if they knew that system was obsolete, they should have corrected the risk assessment and returned it,” Dr Lane said.

Mr Todd, by contrast, had noted it as a “positive finding” that Mr Stokes’ assessment had given at least some consideration to disabled people.

‘Was it an error which would prevent the fire risk assessment from being considered suitable and sufficient?’

As we heard at length before the summer break, the lifts at Grenfell Tower did not meet full “firefighting” standards, which meant they could not be used for evacuation.

This was something Mr Stokes got wrong: he misclassified the lifts and said in his assessments that it could be used to evacuate residents.

Dr Lane called this a “significant error”. “Was it an error which, in your opinion, would prevent the fire risk assessment from being considered suitable and sufficient, at least to that extent?” asked lead counsel to the inquiry Richard Millett QC.

“Yes, I would,” said Dr Lane.

If Mr Stokes himself could not make this assessment then he should have made that clear, Dr Lane said. “If you don’t feel you’re capable of doing that, as a minimum, you should write down, ‘I don’t know what type of lift is installed in this building, someone competent needs to confirm that, and therefore I’m not going to say it’s safe to use in the event of a fire,’” she said.

Once more, this evidence contrasts with Mr Todd, who called the error “minor” because KCTMO never had any intention to use the lifts to evacuate residents.

Dr Lane’s evidence completes the mammoth module three, which examined the management and maintenance of Grenfell Tower.

On Monday, there will be closing statements for the first two modules (which covered the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower and the testing, marketing and sale of the components of the cladding system) before the inquiry moves to opening statements for the next module: examining the training and preparation of the London Fire Brigade.

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