The report of the public inquiry into the causes of the Grenfell Tower fire has been published – and it forms a devastating verdict on the incompetence, dishonesty and greed that made possible a disaster in which 72 people died.
Sir Martin Moore-Bick’s report chronicles failures in the construction industry, the council, regulators and central government. “The simple truth is the deaths that occurred were all avoidable,” Moore-Bick said at the report’s launch.
Who was to blame; what are the efforts to bring those criminally liable to justice; and what reforms are proposed to stop something similar to Grenfell happening again?
The companies
At the root of the fire was the fact that the cladding materials and insulation in the walls of the tower proved to be highly flammable. The report says that the key companies involved – Arconic, Celotex, and Kingspan – had engaged in “deliberate and sustained strategies to manipulate the testing processes, misrepresent test data and mislead the market”.
The findings could hardly be more serious, explained Robert Booth, Guardian social affairs correspondent. “The evidence has mounted against them over the last few years,” he said. “The key word he[Moore-Bick] uses is ‘systematic’: he hasn’t just detected a couple of bad apples. The picture that emerges is of companies with a drive for profit and commercial success at the expense of anything that gets in their way.”
Arconic, a multibillion-dollar US company, made the combustible cladding panels on the outside the tower. Moore-Bick finds that senior executives knew that the cladding in use could be highly flammable and did not meet safety standards. But instead of distributing warnings or withdrawing it from market, the company was “determined to exploit what it saw as weak regulatory regimes in certain countries including the UK”.
The report said that Kingspan, which made about 5% of the combustible foam insulation used at Grenfell, knowingly made false claims about its ability to withstand fire. Kingspan had “long-running internal discussions about what it could get away with”. When questions were raised about safety, a senior manager said that critics could “go fuck themselves”.
Celotex, which made most of the insulation, tried to break into the market by “dishonest means” after it found it could not meet building regulations with its own rival to Kingspan’s product. And it presented its insulation as safe “although it knew that was not the case”.
The official failings
Moore-Bick paints a damning picture of government failure stretching back to 1991, when a cladding fire in Liverpool provided the first opportunity to make necessary reforms. He reserves particular criticism for the deregulation drive under David Cameron’s government, which was presented as a “bonfire of red tape” but saw crucial safety matters “ignored, delayed or disregarded”.
Eric Pickles, the housing secretary under Cameron, said on oath that the attempt to cut red tape had not been applied to building regulations. But the report concludes that this evidence was “flatly contradicted by that of his officials and by the contemporaneous documents”. And it says that the government was “well aware” of the risks, particularly after a 2013 coroner’s report on a cladding fire that killed six people in another London council block, but “failed to act on what it knew”.
“The report is clear that this goes back decades,” Robert said. “It’s not just the Conservative government that he’s pointing the finger at. But it is clear that in the Cameron years, this drive to cut red tape dominated decision making, and that the policy dominated the thinking in Pickles’ department. Fire safety was ignored.”
The regulators are also subject to heavy criticism. The British Board of Agrément (BBA), which certificates construction products as safe, is described as “incompetent” and guilty of “an inappropriate desire to please its customers”, even accepting their suggestions on wording for certificates. The National House Building Council, meanwhile, “was also unwilling to upset its own customers and the wider construction industry by revealing the extent of the problems”. Construction News has a useful summary of the criticisms of several other bodies that played a role.
The landlord
Both the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the tenant management organisation (TMO) that administered the tower on its behalf and ran a £10m refurbishment showed a “persistent indifference to fire safety, particularly the safety of vulnerable people”, the report says.
“The TMO was found to be consistently ignoring residents’ views,” Robert said. “It was often very defensive when it came to criticism.” Moore-Bick notes two “penetrating” reports years before the fire which found significant failings including “the residents’ lack of trust” – but said that the TMO “learned nothing”.
The relationship between the TMO and residents was a toxic one: residents “regarded the TMO as an uncaring and bullying overlord that belittled and marginalised them”. But the TMO “lost sight of the fact that the residents were people who depended on it for a safe and decent home”.
“A clear picture emerges of a broken-down relationship,” Robert said. “And it says they failed to meet basic obligations on fire safety – like gathering information on disabled people to make a plan so that they could escape a fire.” About 40% of the building’s vulnerable and disabled residents died.
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The reforms
The inquiry made urgent recommendations for reforms to stop a repeat of Grenfell. Key recommendations include a new chief construction adviser role, and a construction regulator overseen by a member of the cabinet, drawing together a range of related functions that are currently spread across different bodies; an urgent review of fire safety guidance; and a new independent panel to examine whether bodies with a commercial interest in getting work should continue to be charged with building control.
Keir Starmer promised yesterday that the government would respond within six months. He said that there would be a drive to speed up the “far, far too slow” process of removing unsafe cladding from other buildings, and said that the companies condemned by the inquiry would be barred from receiving public contracts.
“There is an awful lot that needs to be sorted out,” Robert said. “The government has to hear that loudly. What happened in Dagenham was a very near miss.”
Prosecutions
Prosecutions were delayed until the conclusion of the inquiry – and it is likely to be another three years until any criminal trials take place, Vikram Dodd reports.
The police said on Wednesday that it would take 12 to 18 months for evidence to be submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service; offences already being considered include corporate manslaughter, gross negligence manslaughter, fraud and health and safety offences. About 50 people have been interviewed as suspects, but the report is likely to prompt a new round of interviews. Trials are not expected until at least 2027.
“I think many of the families will be satisfied with the fine grain of detail that the report includes, and many of the findings in relation to responsibility,” Robert said. “But what they really want now are criminal prosecutions.” As a statement from Grenfell United said on Wednesday: “It is a significant chapter in the journey to truth, justice and change. But justice has not been delivered.”
The future
The 1,700 page Grenfell report is not just a matter of historic concern. Last week, a fire engulfed a block of flats in Dagenham that had known safety issues; the role played by the cladding of the building will form a key part of the investigation. Yesterday, a fire broke out at another block of flats in Catford. “There is real urgency to the recommendations in the report,” Robert Booth said. “It is shocking how much there is that needs to be done so many years later.”
Moore-Bick concluded his statement launching the report by reciting the names of the victims, from six-year-old Yaqub Hashim, who loved model-building and wanted to be a firefighter when he grew up, to 84-year-old Sheila, a prolific writer known to loved ones by her first name alone and described by a friend as “love, pure and simple”. You can read a collection of portraits of the 72, first published in 2018, here.
The bereaved and survivors said yesterday that as important as the report is, closure will not come until prosecutions are delivered. “If we don’t have this justice we will speak all the time about Grenfell,” said Karim Khalloufi, whose sister Khadija died on the 17th floor. “We want to speak about her as a good memory but we speak all the time about how Khadija was burnt.”
