“Decades of failure” by the UK government and parts of the construction industry led directly to the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire, according to the final report of a public inquiry.
Seventy-two people have died after Britain’s worst fire disaster since World War II as flames ripped through the outer walls of a newly refurbished high-rise apartment block in the west. London.
A report released Wednesday found that successive governments have failed to force building product manufacturers to comply with credible safety standards or to stop them from deliberately misleading the market and regulators.
Inquiry chairman Sir Martin Moore-Bick accused the housing department of repeatedly failing to heed warnings about serious risks to life posed by some facade cladding systems over many years.
His report said the department, which he called “complacent”, “mismanaged” and “defensive”, had presided over a woefully inadequate and fragmented regulatory regime and under David Cameron’s previous government had prioritised deregulation over safety.
“Even issues affecting life safety are being ignored, delayed or ignored,” the report said, and the government “firmly resists calls from across the fire service sector to regulate fire risk assessors and amend the fire safety order”.
The report also added that the housing department had allowed “unscrupulous” manufacturers of products for use outside high-rise buildings to engage in “deliberate and sustained strategies to manipulate testing, misrepresent data and mislead the market”.
The report named US company Arconic as the main supplier of the coating used on the Grenfell Toweras well as UK-based Celotex and Ireland-based Kingspan, which supplied insulation for the building.
The first phase of the investigation, which concluded in December 2018, looked into what happened in the early morning hours of June 14, 2017, concluding that the “primary reason why the fire spread so quickly” was the exterior cladding made of aluminum with a polyethylene core. The insulation panels “contributed to the speed” with which the fire spread.
Wednesday’s report accused Arconic of pursuing “a deliberate strategy to continue selling [the cladding material] in the UK based on fire performance claims they knew were false”.
Celotex, the company that made the “flammable” foam insulation used at Grenfell, “engaged in a fraudulent scheme to deceive customers and the market at large” about the safety of its products, the report said.
The report also accused officials at the private Building Research Institute responsible for fire testing of “complicitly facilitating this strategy.”
Irish company Kingspan also provided misleading information about the fire safety of its insulation products and “unjustifiably exploited the industry’s lack of understanding” about them, relying “on the fact that an unsuspecting market would likely believe its own claims,” the report said.
Arconic said it had “acknowledged its role as one of the suppliers of materials involved in the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower” and “made a financial contribution to a settlement for those affected, as well as to a restorative justice fund”.
Celotex said it had “reviewed and improved its process controls” since the fire “to meet industry best practice” and was cooperating fully with any investigation.
Kingspan said it had “long ago acknowledged completely unacceptable historical failings… in parts of our UK insulation business” but added that these failings “were not responsible for the tragedy”.
The British Board of Agrément, a trade body that certifies products’ compliance with regulatory requirements, was also criticised. “The dishonest strategies of Arconic and Kingspan succeeded largely due to the incompetence of the BBA,” the report added.
The inquiry also blamed the disaster at a local level. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the council responsible for overseeing social housing building regulations, had shown “persistent indifference to fire safety, particularly the safety of vulnerable people”.
The report said residents of Grenfell Tower viewed the Tenants Management Organisation, which manages the building, as “a heartless and bullying overlord who belittles and shuns them”.
At the time, TMO chief executive Robert Black was “reluctant” to inform the council about issues affecting fire safety.
The London Fire Brigade was also criticised in detail. The shortcomings in its firefighting capabilities in high-rise buildings were due to “a lack of effective management and leadership”. These failures were exacerbated by “the persistent but unfounded assumption that building regulations are sufficient to ensure that external wall fires of the type that have occurred in other countries will not occur in this country”.
The report said that in the immediate aftermath of the fire, the government of former prime minister Theresa May delivered a “disorganized, slow, indecisive and disjointed” response.
The report also added that there was “a blatant lack of respect for human dignity and decency, leaving many directly affected feeling abandoned by the authorities and completely helpless”.
Grenfell United, which represents some of the fire’s survivors and relatives, said “justice has not been served”, and called on the government to ban Arconic, Kingspan and Celotex from public sector contracts.
Stuart Cundy, deputy assistant commissioner at the Metropolitan Police, said the criminal investigation would proceed “as quickly as possible” but the report would have to be considered alongside other evidence and this would take “at least 12 to 18 months”.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the report had identified “significant and widespread failings” and pledged to “carefully consider” its recommendations. “I hope those outside government will do the same,” he added in a statement.
