Thread by @PeteApps

Here's the story: in 2014/15 Celotex could not get its insulation past NHBC inspectors for use on high rise buildings. In September 2014, the body said Celotex had "no relevant testing information" for the product

In January 2015, a contractor emailed Celotex to say NHBC had rejected its insulation from a high rise it was working on.

“They [NHBC] are claiming that it does burn, as does the Kingspan K15 product and they are very nervous of it being used in high rise buildings,” email said

It got worse a couple of months later when Ardmore, another developer, was ordered to remove Celotex from a job in progress at great cost because it was not compliant with the regs.

Ardmore sent a furious letter to Celotex saying “Clearly you are an international supplier and manufacturer of some repute and we are amazed that you send products to market that are not suitable for their intended use."

Celotex then had a meeting with NHBC where its argument about the compliance of the project were rejected as "stupid". The meeting was described in Celotex notes as “quite heated (every pun intended)”.

Internally, Celotex pondered why NHBC was rejecting its product, despite having approved Kingspan K15 (very similar) for the last decade.

“Do they insure fire damage? Would they be liable for deaths?” wrote a member of the technical team

But then a year later, something funny happens. The NHBC publishes a document which says Celotex RS5000 and Kingspan K15 are automatically acceptable, regardless of test data, for use on high rises - including with combustible ACM cladding.

“Were you surprised by this apparent volte face, this change of position, from the NHBC within less than a year?” asked Richard Millett QC, counsel to the inquiry.

“It did seem surprising, yes,” replied Paul Evans, former head of marketing at Celotex.

“Was that change as a result of the lobbying of the NHBC by players in the market - I’m not necessarily including Celotex in that - to achieve NHBC buy in?” asked Mr Millett.

“I don’t know what other companies were doing I just know we’d met NHBC on a couple of occasions"

We have heard from prior opening statements, NHBC was being lobbied by Kingspan, which boasted of "slowly educating the firm".

NHBC had no involvement in Grenfell, but my research from 2018 shows they signed off 50+ dangeous ACM towers insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/nhbc…

Some other bits from today:

- Celotex failed a Class 0 test in 2017 despite having advertised as Class 0 for years. It failed the test inside the first three minutes. Significant because many took Class 0 as meaning it was acceptable for use on high rises (it didn't)

- Paul Evans was disciplined and resigned for his role in juking the numbers to make it look like the product had better insulation values than it actually did in December 2017. He claimed this was an "orchestrated" move to get rid of staff involved in RS5000 before the inquiry.

Story: insidehousing.co.uk/news/nhbc-drop…