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Grenfell Tower Inquiry diary week 63: ‘It came after the general move towards deregulation. So more regulation was not welcome’

News11.02.223.30 PM by Peter Apps

The government’s focus on deregulation before the Grenfell Tower fire was placed in the spotlight this week with a series of shocking revelations about its failure to amend fire safety guidance. Peter Apps and Grainne Cuffe report

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Grenfell Tower Inquiry diary week 63: ‘It came after the general move towards deregulation. So more regulation was not welcome’ #UKhousing

The Grenfell Tower Inquiry’s investigation of the actions of central government stepped up a notch this week, with a series of shocking revelations relating to the work of the Building Research Establishment (BRE) and a failure to act on a devastatingly prescient warning in the years before the blaze.

We will start our recap with the work of the BRE.

‘Do you think it’s right that the findings from hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of fires actually reaffirmed the overall effectiveness of the building regulations?’

The BRE’s innovation park at its headquarters in Watford (picture: BRE)

The BRE is a grand and historic institution of the UK built environment sector. Initially formed in the aftermath of World War I to provide the scientific underpinning for the Homes for Heroes drive, its research and testing into the science of buildings has underpinned our policies for more than a century.

But in 1997, it ceased to be a part of the British state and was privatised – becoming a not-for-profit trust reliant on commercial income and winning government contracts.

We have already had extensive evidence about its involvement in testing the combustible insulation products ultimately used on Grenfell Tower.

But this week, we looked at something different: the research it carried out for government to inform its fire safety regulations.

In particular, the focus was on its Investigation of Real Fires project. This work, which had run since 1988, and was described as effectively a “watching brief” to monitor real fires to see if any demonstrated evidence that regulations or guidance needed to change.

Dr David Crowder, the former head of fire investigation at the BRE, who worked on the project from 2006 and led it from 2015, explained that the project mainly involved online monitoring of media reports and incident updates from fire and rescue services which would then be summarised for government.

Curiously though, the BRE rarely seemed to find much to improve about regulations.

In fact, in every year-end report for 14 years, they cut and pasted the same conclusion: “The findings from this period have reaffirmed the overall effectiveness of the building regulations and [fire safety guidance] Approved Document B in providing for the safety of life in the event of fire.”

“Do you think it’s right that over that 14−year period, the findings from these investigations, covering hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of fires, actually reaffirmed the overall effectiveness of the building regulations and Approved Document B in providing for life safety? Do you think that’s likely to be correct?” asked counsel to the inquiry Kate Grange QC.

Mr Crowder said the statement was only intended to provide assurance that the BRE did not see the need for a “total rewrite” of building regulations, and more specific issues were raised individually.

But the power to do even this was set to be curtailed.

‘It came after the general move towards deregulation. So more regulation was not welcome’

David Crowder gives evidence to the inquiry (picture: Grenfell Tower Inquiry)

In October 2012, the BRE agreed a new contract with government to continue this work. But the terms changed.

In the new contract, the government insisted that future reports should “not contain any policy recommendations” or proposed revisions to guidance. This could now only be done at the specific request of government in a dedicated policy report.

Mr Crowder said he believed there had been “unhappiness” about a prior recommendation, although he could not remember the specifics. “It came after the general move towards deregulation. So more regulation was not welcome,” he said.

The coalition government was at this stage engaged in its ‘red tape challenge’, and was promising to remove twice as many regulations as it imposed. Prime minister David Cameron had declared an intention to “kill health and safety culture”.

“Did anybody point out that the objective not to make any policy recommendations was potentially directly in conflict with that stated objective of the project?” asked Ms Grange.

Mr Crowder said he could not remember. He said that the BRE could try and “signal without making recommendations” that there were issues that needed attention.

But he said he felt “hobbled” by this limit. “It goes back to the wider piece about the state of government research in relation to fire safety,” he said. “It was part of… the atmosphere, if you like, around where fire safety under building regulations was going at that time.”

‘Did you ever consider that it might be dangerous to continue with this project?’

An image from the Sudbury House fire, posted to YouTube (picture: April Joy)

The project also suffered from funding restrictions. Mr Crowder said the budget was around £100,000 per year – which left them only able to visit the site of eight fires per year and unable to even secure photographs of many of the fires they investigated.

He described the project as “cut to the bone” and said that when a government official suggested taking an additional 20% off, “I laughed at him down the phone”.

“Did you ever consider that it might be dangerous to continue with this project… without mentioning to government that the constraints of the budget were such that, in fact, proper assessments couldn’t be made?” asked Ms Grange.

“We were trying to do our best with what we had because the alternative wasn’t going to be more money, it was going to be, well, let’s just cancel the contract,” said Mr Crowder.

The inquiry looked into two fires the project investigated in particular detail: Sudbury House in Wandsworth, south London, in August 2010, and Taplow House in Camden, north London, in January 2012.

These were significant, because both buildings contained the same polyethylene-cored aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding later used on Grenfell Tower and represented an opportunity to identify that this product was in wide use in the UK.

But the BRE’s reports contained only minimal summaries of both fires, with no consideration given to the composition of the cladding or potential implications to building regulations.

In the case of Sudbury, a YouTube video, available below, which showed the beginnings of upward and downward fire spread in the cladding before it was extinguished, was not seen by the BRE despite being posted on the day of the fire.

“Do you accept that with hindsight… the reality is that the BRE did not conduct its initial investigation into this fire thoroughly enough to identify the fact that these fires had serious implications for the building regulations and the associated guidance?” asked Ms Grange.

“I would respond that [BRE] conducted its investigation in accordance with the parameters set out and the information available. With hindsight, yes, more should have been discovered, but that is with the benefit of hindsight,” replied Mr Crowder.

He also accepted that the BRE did not generally investigate international fires through this project, saying that the government believed “international fires would not provide useful information” as regulations differed overseas.

Asked specifically about a series of ACM fires in the Middle East in the 2010s, he said: “There was a belief that these fires wouldn’t occur in the UK because ACM wasn’t being installed in the UK. I mean, that’s obviously wrong, but that was the view at the time.”

‘I’m satisfied that there will be no need for you to revisit Lakanal House’

On 3 July 2009, a blaze at Lakanal House in south London killed six people. As we now know, this presented a major opportunity to identify the same weaknesses that led to the Grenfell Tower tragedy.

The BRE’s team began investigating immediately after the fire. They visited the site and carried out some preliminary investigations, delivering an initial report to Brian Martin, the senior civil servant in charge of building regulations, on 16 July.

Concerns were raised about the external spread of fire – including downwards spread. This was significant, because downward fire spread was not an issue provided for in building guidance.

But Mr Martin did not see the need for the BRE’s work to continue. “For the purposes of the fire investigation contract you have with the department, I’m satisfied that there will be no need for you to revisit Lakanal House,” he wrote on 28 July. He said his colleagues were “happy for you to step away” from the project.

“Is it fair to say, you were disappointed to receive this email shutting down the investigation?” asked Ms Grange (pictured above).

“Yes,” replied Mr Crowder. He said he did not know why the investigation had been wrapped up.

Further emails from Mr Martin from 14 July show that he had already come to the belief that the fire would not result in the “need for changes to [Approved Document B]”.

“Can you help us with how Brian Martin could have come to the view just 11 days after the fire that there would be no need for changes to Approved Document B. Can you shed any light on that for us?” asked Ms Grange.

Mr Crowder said that he was “aware there were discussions that were ongoing” but he was “not party to them”.

He would go on to investigate the fire for the police, but said the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) had little interest once they learned the panels on the exterior of the building did not comply with guidance.

“There was clearly a lot wrong with the building, it was non-compliant in lots of different ways,” said Mr Crowder. “Therefore, [Mr Martin felt] it is not a problem with the guidance as such, it’s that people haven’t followed it.”

‘I knew about the government’s Red Tape Challenge at the time’

The issue of external fire spread, though, did not go away. The coroner who ultimately investigated Lakanal House specifically raised the issue.

So did an All Party Parliamentary Group on Fire Safety, who repeatedly pushed government ministers to introduce tougher measures for external walls.

This, Mr Crowder said, led to the BRE being commissioned to research the issue with an article summarising this research ultimately published in April 2016.

The article concluded that there was no major need for changes to regulations or guidance. “With the exception of one or two unfortunate but rare cases, there is currently no evidence from these investigations to suggest that the current recommendations… are failing in their purpose,” it said.

But this week, Mr Crowder described this report as “flawed” and “should be seen in the context of the extremely limited resources in terms of budget, people and time that were available”.

In particular, he accepted that the report could be read as containing a “false assertion” that ‘Class 0’ – the performance criteria for external surfaces of walls in Approved Document B – was adequate.

Mr Crowder said the report was written in the knowledge that the government did not want to toughen regulations.

“I knew about the government’s Red Tape Challenge at the time,” said Mr Crowder. “Everything in Approved Document B is there for securing life safety. The government policy of ‘one in, two out’ and so on meant very difficult decisions would have to be made. If you’re going to introduce something new, something else was going to have to go and that’s not something anyone wants to have to do.”

Sir Martin Moore-Bick, chair of the inquiry (pictured above), asked: “I have to say I find that puzzling. Isn’t it the task of the advisor to tell the government what needs to be done… and leave them to get on with it?”

“Don’t get me wrong, the work was done and the findings were provided. It’s just that I understood the parameters that were sitting around that,” said Mr Crowder.

‘There’s going to be a major fire’

This issue of Class 0 ties into the second major story of the week.

Early in his evidence, Mr Crowder said he had given evidence to the Supreme Court of Singapore (where it is also used) in 2015 that it was not appropriate. “I don’t support Class 0 as a test,” he said. “I understand that there are political motivations as to why it was retained, but those are political, they’re not technical.”

The issue, he said, was that the standard, which primarily considered the spread of flame over the surface of an object, was not a good test for composite products – where the surface may be metal but the core was highly combustible.

He said Mr Martin did not support the use of the classification either.

“I remember being told there were, you know, industry interests − products that were on the market as a result of achieving Class 0 that would cease to be on the market if [it] ceased to be a viable option,” he said.

On Tuesday, we heard from another witness – David Metcalfe, director of the Centre for Window and Cladding Technology (CWCT) (pictured above), about a very clear warning on this point.

In July 2014, the CWCT held a fire safety meeting attended by Mr Martin, Dr Sarah Colwell, a colleague of Mr Crowder’s at the BRE, and various other industry figures.

At the meeting, the issue of Class 0 was raised – specifically in relation to ACM.

The minutes record the statement that ACM products which claimed to achieve Class 0 were being widely used in the UK – making a repeat of the huge fires in the Middle East a possibility.

But Dr Colwell claimed this shouldn’t be happening. She said Approved Document B banned the use of such combustible cladding by virtue of a paragraph which required insulation to meet the higher standard of ‘limited combustibility’.

This was not clear, though – ACM is not insulation. “We were surprised to hear what Sarah Colwell had to say, and we would have certainly questioned how [she] reached that conclusion because it didn’t seem logical to us,” he said.

“We were being offered in an interpretation or a view that didn’t appear consistent with what was written [in Approved Document B].”

Mr Martin had left the meeting by this point, but Dr Colwell said she would draft a ‘frequently asked question’ for his approval setting out that the material was banned.

The inquiry saw evidence that Mr Martin may have been concerned by what he heard at the meeting. One witness statement, shown this week, said that as he left he commented: “There’s going to be a major fire.”

‘There’s a 10-year legacy of misunderstanding by the UK construction industry – what are the life safety implications of that?’

Mr Metcalfe told the inquiry he expected the FAQ to arrive “within weeks”. However, it did not appear.

In September, the CWCT attended a meeting with Dr Colwell to help draft it.

By March 2015, no draft had been provided and Mr Metcalfe emailed Dr Colwell for an update. She responded saying it had been “drafted and revisited” and would “hopefully be closed out soon”.

The inquiry then heard that Mr Metcalfe continued to chase Dr Colwell for an update – sending five emails, plus several phone calls and voicemails through to November 2015. She did not respond.

In March 2016, a further meeting was held, with Mr Martin again in attendance.

Minutes record that he told the meeting that Approved Document B was intended to ban the use of combustible cladding due to the phrase “filler material” in the section on insulation.

This was supposed to be a “catch-all” term, he said, meaning all materials in the external wall should have met the standard of limited combustibility.

Mr Metcalfe said the clause was “poorly written” and “misleading”, but said he was still “content” to follow the government’s interpretation going forward. CWCT published advice to its members in April 2017 saying that cladding panels should meet the standard of limited combustibility.

But still, there was nothing official from government. And no one seemed to be asking the question: if this has been misunderstood for so long, what about all the dangerous buildings out there?

“No one thought to… ask themselves the question, well… there’s a 10-year legacy of misunderstanding by the UK construction industry – what are the life safety implications of that?” asked Richard Millett QC, counsel to the inquiry (pictured above).

“I don’t know,” replied Mr Metcalfe.

The timing of all this is particularly pertinent as the decision to clad Grenfell Tower with ACM was made in summer 2014. A prompt warning from government may have made a difference.

The government has insisted since the fire that its guidance banned ACM.

We also saw last week that after the fire, Mr Martin sought “independent experts” to “state publicly” that the use of the word ‘filler’ effectively banned ACM. This week, further emails showed him approaching the BRE with the same request.

‘If this occurs there could be economic consequences for the building industry and the UK as a whole’

There were also questions over the CWCT’s actions.

The inquiry has already heard that cladding tests in the early 2000s showed rainscreen systems, of the kind later used on Grenfell, failing drastically.

This included one with Class 0-rated ACM, which suffered a particularly drastic failure. So why didn’t the government immediately revoke the Class 0 standard?

This week, the government released a letter (pictured above) from the CWCT apparently lobbying against such a move.

In 2002, following the tests, it wrote to Dr Colwell warning that it was “concerned that use of the proposed test will lead to the abandonment of this method of construction [rainscreen cladding]”. “If this occurs there could be economic consequences for the building industry and the UK as a whole,” the letter read.

Asked about the letter, Mr Metcalfe said it was written before he joined the organisation.

The CWCT is an industry body supported by around 350 companies, which the inquiry heard has a two-tiered system of membership that allows higher fee-paying “sponsors” to “buy the right” to sit on its technical committees.

What was their view of changes to regulations that could limit the sales of their products? After all, it did not clarify that Class 0 products should not be used until three years after the initial meeting and emails show it insisting a Class 0 cladding product could be used shortly after the session.

“Was the CWCT ever placed under any pressure from its sponsors or members not to make this clarification by way of published guidance?” asked Mr Millett.

“No,” replied Mr Metcalfe.

‘The decision to assess the BRE in 2021 was prompted by an article in Inside Housing’

On Monday, we heard evidence about investigations into the BRE after the Grenfell fire.

The United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS), which regulates the BRE, learned through an Inside Housing report of the inquiry that a test carried out on Kingspan’s K15 insulation in 2005 had been withdrawn because it “was not representative of the K15 product which has been sold by them from 2006 onwards”.

This test had been crucial in Kingspan’s claims that its product was suitable for use on high-rise buildings, but had in fact been carried out on a legacy version of the combustible insulation.

UKAS prepared a report reached “fairly damning conclusions” about the organisation, identifying failings that “may be grounds for either partial or full suspension” if repeated in a further assessment.

When questioned, Lorraine Turner, accreditation director at UKAS (pictured above), agreed that it “appeared to be the case” that the BRE had not learned lessons from the past.

But the inquiry also heard that the report was later amended, without the input of the original assessor, to be more favourable to the BRE after it complained, in a step which was described as “appeasing” the influential testing house.

In the end both reports were withdrawn as UKAS was intending to carry out another surveillance visit of BRE in the near future, and also because the first did not include improvement actions and the second “could not stand” without the input of the lead assessor.

The inquiry continues, with evidence from Ms Colwell beginning on Monday.

Grenfell Tower Inquiry week 63: headlines

Government 'shut down' investigation into Lakanal House fire less than a month after deadly blaze

The government discontinued an investigation into a deadly 2009 high rise fire after less than a month and before crucial questions about the reason for the rapid fire spread had been answered, emails released by the Grenfell Tower Inquiry today revealed.

Government contractually prohibited fire investigation group from recommending policy changes

The government “hobbled” a group it appointed to identify any gaps in regulations revealed by real world fires by contractually prohibting them from recommending any actual changes to regulations, the Grenfell Tower Inquiry heard today.

Senior government official failed to provide 'desperately needed' clarification over Grenfell cladding

A senior government official failed to provide “desperately needed” clarification that Grenfell Tower’s highly combustible cladding should not have been used on high rises, despite multiple warnings in the years leading to the blaze that existing guidance was not clear.

Testing regulator wrote 'damning' report of BRE after Grenfell inquiry revelations

The UK’s regulator for testing and accreditation wrote a “fairly damning” report of the Building Research Establishment (BRE) last year, after learning through an Inside Housing report that a key cladding system test carried out by the testing house had been withdrawn.

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