Thread by @JSimpsonjourno

🚨Grenfell morning round-up🚨
Pretty explosive evidence this morning as Danny Cotton, former London Fire Brigade Commissioner, answered questions around how aware the organisation was about growing building safety issues and the LFB's preparedness to tackle them. Thread🧵

Evidence began with a focus on an analysis piece that was shared between LFB directors, including Ms Cotton, about a cladding fire in Dubai.

The article included a line that seemed to indicate that similar fires couldn’t happen in the UK because of stricter building regs

QC Millett probed Ms Cotton, who was LFB operational assurance head at the time, on how aware she was of the issues around the growing prevalence of external wall fires in UK. She said that she was not and that it was the LFB’s 'fire safety' unit which was responsible for this

She added that the 'fire safety often worked in a ‘silo’ and was not as well connected to other parts of the LFB as it should have been

Focus then turned onto the comments below the article. One comment took issue with the assumption in the article that UK building regs were strong enough to avert a similar disaster at home. It stated👇

Perhaps even more worringly, this commenter suggested that there were ‘a number of large schemes being 'incorrectly specified and constructed’ on the back of misinterpretations of what ‘class 0’ meant

Ms Cotton said discussed the article with colleagues but says that she was not aware of the frequency of issues found in the UK. When asked if anyone in the LFB team had given her assurances that a similar fire couldn’t happen in the UK because of regs, she said ‘no’

Counsel Millet then turned to this document written in in August 2016 by the LFB’s head of regulatory enforcement.

It outlined the growing issues that his team was finding with poor compartmentation in resi buildings in London.

Ms Cotton said she had never seen the document

The report included crucial information and warnings about the prevalence of compartmentation issues. It explained how this could result in fire spread into other dwellings and overwhelm residents and firefighters. It said there was a particular concern around vulnerable persons

The report pulled out a number of examples in which compartmentation failures had led to increased firespread, including Lakanal (where six people died), Pacific Wharf in Rotherhithe and other lower profile fires

It concluded by highlighting that these issues were growing in prevalence and that these were posing a ‘high risk’ to public safety.

It also stated that it was the belief of the LFB that the fire risk assessment (FRA) processes were inadequate and not spotting these issues

When asked directly why none of this information was passed on to fire crews to help in tackling fires, Ms Cotton said that she didn’t know, as she had never been shown the info. She added that often the fire safety team did not link up effectively with the operation team

Millet then asked: “Why did the LFB not send message to crews telling them of growing concerns that stay put may be inappropriate in some the buildings, and it may be required to evacuate residents in challenging environments?’

She said: “I don’t have the answer for that”.

Attention then turned to a letter sent by the LFB to Gavin Barwell, who was the then housing minister, in which it requested a meeting to discuss strong concerns around the quality of housing construction in London and more keenly the issues around compartmentation in new builds

Here is that letter👇which includes concerns around contractor competency and how this drive compartmentation deficiencies.

Important to point out that nearly every l'holder you speak to embroiled in the building safety scandal is facing some form of compartmentation issue

In the letter the LFB state that they are on average identifying at least one building every month with significant compartmentation deficiencies but that it was safe to assume that there are “many other cases”

This letter was sent when Ms Cotton had just become commissioner. She said that it was only just before this letter was sent (April 2017) that she had become aware of the frequency of compartmentation issues. She said she couldn't remember if she met Barwell after it was sent

When asked if this prompted her to take steps to ensure that firefighters were given better training to combat potential compartmentation issues, she said she didn’t. Adding that it was an ‘exceptionally busy time’, dealing with some high-profile terrorist attacks

Millet then pulled up another letter sent by the LFB, this time to Conservative MP Ben Gummer.

It was sent ahead of the publication of the Conservative manifesto for the 2017 election, which took place just before the Grenfell Tower fire

The LFB set out a number of issues in terms of housing and put forward several recommendations to be put in the manifesto. This included growing concerns about the quality of construction and widespread compartmentation deficiencies that threatened its stay put policy

This letter was sent to all the major parties. Reflecting on the letter, Ms Cotton said she had no recollection of it. She was then presented with an email from the LFB public affairs head, requesting her to sign it off

Responding to this Ms Cotton said that she would have signed it but had no recollection of the specific document as she had between ’20 to 30 letters’ coming in front of her every week in her new role as LFB commissioner

Morning ended with Cotton being asked if she had changed her view on the preparedness of LFB to tackle Grenfell since she first gave evidence in 2018

(She famously said in '18 that the fire was as foreseeable as “space shuttle landing on the Shard”)

She responded like this👇

And when asked to identify anything she should have done during her time at the LFB to better equip incident commanders at the Grenfell fire, she said👇