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Grenfell inquiry blames governments, companies and fire service

BBC International News Sep - 04 - 2024 , 14:07

Grenfell's 'path to disaster' that led to 72 deaths

The Grenfell Tower fire that killed 72 people in 2017 was the result of a chain of failures by governments, "dishonest" companies and a lack of strategy by the fire service, the final report of the six-year public inquiry has concluded.

The damning report sets out a "path to disaster" at Grenfell stretching back to the early 1990s over how fire safety in high-rise buildings has been managed and regulated.

The coalition and Conservative governments “ignored, delayed or disregarded” concerns about the safety of industry practices, the inquiry said.

The report highlighted the "systematic dishonesty" of manufacturers as a reason for the tower block being clad in combustible materials.

One manufacturer was also found to have “deliberately concealed” the fire risks its cladding posed.

Among the recommendations laid out in the 1,700-page report are the introduction of a single construction regulator, a College of Fire and Rescue to improve the training of firefighters and changes to the way materials are tested for fire safety.

The report's publication comes more than seven years after the fire started in a fridge on the fourth floor of the west London tower block, spreading through the cladding before racing up the sides of the building.

Many residents were trapped on higher floors as it spread, and the inquiry found all the victims were dead or unconscious by the time the flames reached them due to "inhalation of asphyxiant gases", primarily carbon monoxide.

The cladding was made of highly flammable polyethylene which was added to the sides of the 1970s-built Grenfell Tower in a disastrous refurbishment in 2016.

The inquiry found fault and incompetence among almost every company involved in the refurbishment.

Among the key findings of the report were:

"Systematic dishonesty" by the manufacturers of cladding and insulation
US firm Arconic, manufacturer of the Reynobond 55 cladding which experts at the inquiry said was "by far the largest contributor" to the fire, deliberately concealed the true extent of the danger of using its product
Manufacturers made "false and misleading claims" over the safety and suitability of insulation to the company which installed it on Grenfell
Failures in London Fire Brigade's training and a lack of a strategy to evacuate the building
Successive governments missed opportunities to act
The local council and the Tenant Management Organisation had a "persistent indifference to fire safety, particularly the safety of vulnerable people"
How building safety is managed in England and Wales is “seriously defective”

Speaking after the report was published, the inquiry chair Sir Martin Moore-Bick said not all of the named organisations and companies "bear the same degree of responsibility for the disaster".

But he said the report showed they all "contributed in one way or another" to the tragedy, attributing most of the failings to "incompetence" but some to "dishonesty and greed".

In a statement to Parliament on Wednesday, Sir Keir Starmer apologised on behalf of the British state, saying those affected had been "let down very badly before, during and in the aftermath of the tragedy".

Police and prosecutors have said that investigators will need until the end of 2025 to complete their inquiry, with final decisions on potential criminal charges by the end of 2026.

“Unscrupulous” manufacturers

The inquiry examined the roles of three companies which made cladding and insulation used in the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower.

In a key passage it concluded:

“One very significant reason why Grenfell Tower came to be clad in combustible materials was systematic dishonesty on the part of those who made and sold the rainscreen cladding… and insulation."

They engaged in “deliberate and sustained strategies to manipulate the testing processes, misrepresent data and mislead the market,” the report found.

Arconic produced panels of Reynobond PE cladding, formed from metal sheets with a plastic layer. This was “extremely dangerous” when folded into box shapes, a practice widely used in the cladding industry, the inquiry concluded.

The cladding was “by far the largest contributor” to the Grenfell fire, according to new research by two inquiry experts.

However from 2005 until after the Grenfell Tower fire, Arconic “deliberately concealed from the market the true extent of the danger of using Reynobond 55 PE in cassette form, particularly on high-rise buildings”. It allowed customers to continue buying the product.

Arconic commissioned fire tests which revealed very poor ratings for cladding installed as folded cassettes but concealed these from the BBA, a British private certification company which attempted to keep the construction industry up to date about safety risks.

This “caused BBA to make statements that Arconic knew were ‘false and misleading'”, the report said.

Among the UK customers which were misled, was Harley Facades, the company which installed the Grenfell cladding.

In a statement released after the report's publication, Arconic Architectural Products SAS (AAP) rejected claims it had sold an "unsafe product" and said it sold sheets of aluminium composite material as specified in the design process which was safe to use and legal to sell in the UK.

"AAP did not conceal information from or mislead any certification body, customer, or the public," the statement added.

credit: BBC