Grenfell six years on: so many are guilty yet reform feels hopeless

A web of blame, malpractice, complacency and dishonesty

BBC graphic

One dark, cold evening in February of this year there was a knock at our front door. It was an architect and friend. He had come to tell us that he was winding up his business. He seemed gloomy.

His reasons for semi-retiring were, as they usually are, complex. But one of them was the deep disillusionment at what he called the ‘shocking’ negligence by the building industry – including his own profession - that led to the fire that engulfed Grenfell Tower.

The fire happened exactly six years ago this week. On a warm, London summer night - June 14, 2017 - a low-cost 24-storey high-rise council building in one of Britain’s richest boroughs went up in flames. It consisted of one and two-bedroom multiple-occupancy flats (social housing) accommodating 600 people. The poor.

A faulty fridge-freezer in Flat 16 on the fourth floor of the West London block caught fire just after midnight. Within minutes the cladding on the outside of the building, installed as part of refurbishment two years earlier, was aflame.

By the time the London fire brigade doused the fridge-freezer, flames were leaping up the building at a terrifying rate devouring everything in their path.

Seventy-two souls perished in the most horrific circumstances. Many more were left homeless, bereaved and penniless.

Chris urged me to read the evidence submitted to the Grenfell inquiry led by retired judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick. Publication of the final report on what happened, why and who was responsible has now been delayed until 2024.

The inquiry received 1,600 witness statements, held more than 300 public hearings and disclosed over 320,000 documents. You can dip into it almost at random and come up with stories that bewilder and shock.

Set against the horror of that night - people being burnt alive, women, children, the elderly - you have to keep reminding yourself that this is not some macabre work of fiction or a ghastly comedy of errors.

The 300-day inquiry closed in November 2022. In a closing statement one of the lawyers for the bereaved and survivors named the project’s architects among those who bear ‘primary responsibility’ for the fire.

We shall have to wait for the report. But there’s plenty of blame to go around. Each link in the chain of responsibility in this crime – architects, suppliers, contractors, building control - leads on from the previous one and on to the next. They are all in it together to coin a phrase.

Richard Millett KC, counsel to the inquiry, in his final statement stated that “each and every one of the deaths that occurred in Grenfell Tower, on the 14 June 2017 was avoidable.”

He accused organisations involved in the refurbishment of spinning “a web of blame” and denying responsibility despite evidence of “incompetence”, “malpractice” and “dishonesty”. Reading the inquiry’s submissions this does not strike me as hyperbole.

Great credit goes to Millett for his quiet, persistent, devastating unearthing of damning evidence. I am also indebted to the Building Design magazine which has faithfully reported (and summarised) the tribunal hearings since the start.

A bit of background. After WWII tower blocks were seen as a quick fix to Britain’s housing shortage and dilapidated 19^th century tenement dwellings. They were also in a sense symbols of post-war aspiration.

But by the 1980s and 90s they had become badges of social exclusion. These vertical villages made building communities virtually impossible. Many became incubators of crime and drug abuse. They put people together to tear them apart.

Victims suffered horrific deaths

Construction of Grenfell Towers began in 1972. Originally marked for demolition, the 221ft Grenfell tower was instead given a bargain basement makeover by Kensington & Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (TMO).

Grenfell’s refit was completed a year before the fire with cheap combustible cladding, banned across Europe. Fire extinguishers were out of date, there were no sprinklers, escape routes were limited. The fears and voices of tenants, many from ethnic minority backgrounds, were ignored.

Here are just a few shockers from the inquiry:

THE ARCHITECT

Project architect Studio E had no experience of working on high-rise residential buildings.

THE CLADDING

The 3000sq m supply of cladding supplied by US manufacturer Arconic Corporation for the Grenfell project through its French subsidiary had failed a 2004 fire test ‘spectacularly’. The company then ‘arranged’ for the fatal product to be successfully rerated.

THE INSULATION

The insulation for Grenfell was partly supplied by Celotex, a wholly owned subsidiary of St Gobain, the giant French construction materials company.  This was the same insulation as an earlier product, which had failed a fire test for use on tall buildings.  The manufacturer simply rebranded its FR5000 panels as suitable for use on buildings above 18m in height partly to compete with an insulation product manufactured by rival firm Kingspan which was nipping at its heels.          

Ireland-based Kingspan group manufactured K15, another insulation product for Grenfell. In one fire test in 2007 the same product produced what was described as  a “raging inferno.”

Celotex, Arconic and Kingspan have been at each other’s throats in a gruesome game of pass the blame. One Kingspan executive told a consultant who questioned its safety to “ go fuck themselves”.

THE PROJECT MANAGER

The cladding specialist responsible for fitting the deadly panels, Harley Facades, did not check the fire performance of the insulation fitted. Ray Bailey, director of Harley Facades, claimed his company was not “ultimately” responsible for making sure the works met building regulations. Bailey said his firm was convinced by Celotex, that the combustible foam complied with building regulations.

Harley Facades struggled to assemble a Grenfell team and ended up appointing Bailey’s 25-year-old son Ben as project manager. Speaking during the second phase of the public inquiry Ben Bailey told the inquiry he did not think understanding Building Regulations was part of his job.

MISSING FILES AND OFFICIAL SILENCE

Hard-copy files relating to the refurbishment were found to be missing from the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s building control records after the fire

The civil servant formerly responsible for fire safety guidance “forgot” to clarify that ACM cladding was not compliant.

Stephanie Barwise QC, lawyer for the bereaved and survivors of the 2017 blaze, said successive governments over the past three decades have engaged in a “prolonged period of concealment” of the fire safety risks of dangerous cladding.

She alleged that three reports into cladding fires in the 1990s had been “covered up”, and an investigation into the 2009 Lakanal House fire (in which six people died) had been shut down by officials in a “grotesque abdication of responsibility”.

Barwise claimed that the results of a series of tests carried out around 2002 on new cladding systems, most of which failed, were also kept confidential, suggesting that officials knew about the risks of combustible cladding 13 years before the West London fire.

The London fire brigade undoubtedly bears some responsibility for the great number of deaths. Its ‘ stay put’ strategy seems to have been fatefully misplaced. But they were chasing a horse after the stable door was bolted.

The Grenfell tragedy is both shocking and predictable, a tale of our times. A society hell-bent on growth with too few houses for too many people, under-resourced and only loosely accountable, cutting corners to save money and ending up killing people.

The police are waiting for the inquiry to report before pursuing charges. But there are so many shades of apparent guilt, shared by so many people, at so many levels across so many sectors that coming up with a solid case that sticks may prove very difficult.

We – the public – are not without responsibility. Either because we buy into the narrative of perpetual growth and look the other way when it suits us. Or because we think that we are over-regulated. We’re not. We just don’t enforce the rules. Health and safety mate.

The 24-hour news cycle drives us to seek the last great disaster. We are shocked, horrified, outraged. We become de-sensitised to hyperbole. The previous worst/biggest/most shocking recedes in the collective memory. We move on.

It’s why things don’t get fixed. It’s why those who can’t afford fancy lawyers, PR consultants or don’t have a hotline into Whitehall get left behind. Think Hillsborough, Windrush, the Post Office and now Grenfell. It’s a bleeding liberty.

Frustration at the lack of help for the bereaved is turning to anger. Edward Daffarn, a survivor, said this week that Grenfell should have been a catalyst for social change. Sadiq Khan, London mayor, said that justice delayed was justice denied.

Why does this feel so hopeless? Why do we think this is yet another corporate crime that will go unpunished? It’s not a conspiracy as some suggest. It’s too crude for that. It’s a kind of collective, criminal complacency.

Sir Keir Starmer, a self-proclaimed human rights activist, could do worse than plant his flag on this ground. Because if a Labour Party isn’t going to take up arms on behalf of the dispossessed who is?