Thread by @PeteApps

Next week the Grenfell Tower Inquiry returns for its second phase. This week, we have five previews of some of the key issues it will investigate.

First today - what was known about cladding in central government? (thread)

insidehousing.co.uk/insight/grenfe…

This topic will have a 'module' to itself so will be a major focus for the inquiry at some point over the next 12/18 months.

Expect former ministers like Eric Pickles and Gavin Barwell to give evidence, as well as key officials.

The warnings really began in the year 2000, when a select committee investigated two tower block fires in the 1990s (Knowsley Heights and Garnock Court) and made recommendations to prevent a disaster

These recommendations included telling ministers to instruct social landlords to check and monitor cladding systems to ensure there was no fire risk. This was never done.

More petinently, it concluded official government guidance set the appropriate standard for cladding as 'Class 0'.

An expert witness warned this was allowing combustible materials to be used as cladding, if they had a non-combustible facing or were packed with fire retardant

As a result, the committee wanted the standard to be changed to non-combustible only, and to have systems justified through large-scale tests.

The large-scale test recommendation was taken up. The non-combustible recommendation was not.

Moving forward, in 2009 the Lakanal House fire killed six people after flames spread across combustible HPL panels and ripped through a poorly maintained tower block.

A coroner's inquest made a series of findings and recommendations in 2013.

We have previously analysed these in detail here: insidehousing.co.uk/insight/insigh…

And why they were missed here: insidehousing.co.uk/insight/insigh…

Critics would say the government was deeply set against new regulations at this point and did not want to tighten building guidance.

Whatever the cause, the 'Class 0' standard stayed in guidance post-Lakanal - despite a clear warning on it from the jurors.

Throughout the 2010s, a series of cladding fires worldwide (chiefly in the Middle East but also Australia) raised concerns in the building industry globally about the danger of using polyethylene-cored ACM (the material which was ultimately used on Grenfell)

These concerns were raised with officials at a meeting with experts in July 2014. Officials were very specifically told that the Class 0 standard was leading to the widespread use of ACM.

Officials disagreed, sayig the guidance prohibited it, but were told this was "not clear"

As a result of this apparant ambiguity, they were encouraged to publish a 'Frequently Asked Question' to clarify the position. They never did.

Two years later cladding panels with a certificate assuring they had a Class 0 rating were installed on Grenfell. The rest is history.

I imagine the inquiry will be keen to understand why these warnings were not acted upon.

Was it a fear of regulation? Was it in reaction to lobbying? Was it that the risks were simply not appreciated? Or all of the above?

It's also important to say that the 'Class 0' element is the important bit with regard to ACM PE cladding, but there are lots of other elements which govt could be questioned on, eg...

Encouraging a continued total reliance on stay put post Lakanal, resistance to sprinkler retrofit over many years, a light touch system of fire risk assessment, downgrading of building control services and allowing the use of 'desktop studies', cuts to fire services etc etc

Really all of these come down to the same question:

Did government neglect fire safety over the course of several decades despite multiple clear warnings? And if so, why and how can we stop it doing so again?

Hopefully we'll have clear answers by the end of this process.

Check back tomorrow for a testing and certification preview. It's more interesting than it sounds.

Don't want to break the thread but the second Lakanal link was supposed to be this one: insidehousing.co.uk/insight/specia…