You are viewing 1 of your 1 free articles
Building control inspector who produced crucial certificate claims he was ‘misled’ by Kingspan
Kingspan misled a building control inspector at a local council to gain a certificate that wrongly identified one of its products as suitable for use on high-rise buildings, the Grenfell Tower Inquiry has heard.
David Jones of Herefordshire Building Control produced a certificate in 2009 which incorrectly stated that Kingspan’s K15 insulation “can be considered a material of limited combustibility” – the basic standard required for high-rise buildings.
Grilled on why he issued it today, Mr Jones said it was based on a mixture of information including a certificate from another certifying body – the British Board of Agrément (BBA) – and Kingspan marketing material.
He admitted to taking inaccurate information in these documents at “face value” when making his decision, and said he did not have the necessary knowledge to make this judgement, a fact that made him initially hesitant about taking on the work at the bequest of the Local Authority Building Control (LABC), the representative group for local authority inspectors that Kingspan paid to obtain it.
READ MORE
Asked if anyone had “misled” him, he replied: “I would say by Kingspan and by the BBA although I don’t know to what extent Kingspan influenced the content of the BBA certificate, knowing now what was going on. But by both those documents there were some very misleading statements and very misleading diagrams that seem to me now to be designed quite deliberately to lead people down a certain interpretation.”
In a meeting with Kingspan’s Phil Heath and Andrew Pack in December 2008, Mr Jones recalled that he left with the impression that Kingspan K15 was of limited combustibility and could therefore be used on high rises.
Mr Jones could not say categorically whether the Kingspan employees he met with had explicitly stated that K15 was of limited combustibility, but he said there had been “some form of inference”.
His witness statement, shown to the inquiry, explained that he “understood [the LABC certificate] to be primarily a marketing tool” and noted that Kingspan saw the LABC’s approval as important.
Mr Jones also referenced a Kingspan video in which an unspecified Kingspan product is burned with a blowtorch for several minutes without catching fire. He suggested that this video had been seen by many of his colleagues and helped inform his decision, despite it not being specifically the K15 product.
“There was definitely an impression in the industry that that was how this product behaved in fire, so what I was being told didn’t seem that outlandish,” he explained.
Mr Jones cited pressure from both the LABC and Kingspan as reasons for issuing the certificate. He said: “I suppose from every angle I was being pressured by LABC and Kingspan to find a way of doing a system approval.”
The inquiry has already heard how the LABC certificate was received by Kingspan when it was issued in May 2009.
Emails from Kingspan’s Phil Heath revealed his jubilation at receiving the certificate. “FANBLOODYTASTIC,” one read.
Another said: “I think LABC convinced themselves [K15] is the best thing since sliced bread. We didn’t even have to get any real ale down him.”
Kingspan immediately stopped ongoing testing of its K15 product after receiving the certificate.
The inquiry continues.
Sign up for our weekly Grenfell Inquiry newsletter
Each week we send out a newsletter rounding up the key news from the Grenfell Inquiry, along with the headlines from the week
Already have an account? Click here to manage your newsletters
