Thread by @PeteApps

On Monday the Grenfell Tower Inquiry will hear opening statements covering the failures of government in the years before the fire.

Here is some of what we already know about one of the most appalling failures of the British state in modern history 🧵

We can start the story in the 1980s, with the government of Margaret Thatcher and the decision to deregulate the building industry with a sweeping piece of legislation that introduced new headline 'standards' instead of local prescriptive rules.

The purpose was clear: to strip away restrictions on industry to allow them to maximise profits. “Maximum self-regulation, minimum government interference,” was how then secretary of state Michael Heseltine sold it.

The new system meant detailed rules were contained in official guides known as Approved Documents. These were non-mandatory and became technical documents which were altered without the scrutiny of Parliament.

Approved Document B - covering fire safety - contained the existing standard for cladding known as 'Class 0'. But this standard was weak. It primarily assessed the spread of flame over the surface of a material. So something with a combustible core could slip through.

At the same time, cladding systems were becoming more common. In fact, the government was driving them forwards with its Estate Action Programme. In 1991 a flagship project it was funding at Knowsley caught fire. Flames spread right up the building.

As I've written, the govt played down the importance of this fire. Rules were not toughened. Class 0 remained the standard for cladding. As @AndrewChapman50 has recently written it appears the cladding panels used on Knowsley may have been combustible

insidehousing.co.uk/insight/insigh…

In 1999, there was another fire, this time in Scotland. A select committee was convened to consider the impacts. It recommended dropping the Class 0 standard and instructing social landlords to check their tower blocks for cladding. Neither was done

But this select committee did set of a process of introducing a new model of 'large-scale testing' to approve cladding systems for use. In the process of setting up this testing system, the govt appears to have commissioned a series of cladding tests.

These (as @BBCTomSymonds revealed) showed several failures. One particularly dramatically, which is described in the testing documents as ‘aluminium-based’. @Jonatha135113 has recently suggested it may have been the same product used on Grenfell
insidehousing.co.uk/news/cladding-…

No warning was issued, and these tests were kept secret. The testing was introduced and in 2005 was expanded to include systems with combustible insulation as well as cladding panels. As we've written, this followed lobbying from insulation companies: insidehousing.co.uk/insight/insigh…

As we've seen elsewhere, this testing system ended up being used by companies such as Kingspan to convince the market that their products were suitable for use on high rises. With insulation standards rising, the use of combustibles became ubiquitous.

In 2009, the fire at Lakanal House spread via combustible external panels and killed six people. A coroner's inquest in 2013 recommended a review of Approved Document B and to encourage the use of sprinklers on high rises.

But almost nothing of substance was done. Approved Document B remained unamended. A group of MPs chaired by the late David Amess wrote repeatedly to ministers to try and force them to act. They were repeatedly fobbed off. insidehousing.co.uk/insight/insigh…

We now know that warnings were also issued by the London Fire Brigade. Senior officers have told the inquiry the government did not act because of its obsession with deregulation. insidehousing.co.uk/news/governmen…

Of course, throughout this whole period each government has championed deregulation. This increased under the coalition who promised to remove two rules for every one they introduced. In this context, toughening fire safety rules was difficult to impossible.

In 2014, Brian Martin was issued a specific warning about the precise type of cladding later used on Grenfell - following several fires in the Middle East. He does not appear to have acted. insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/gove…

He was also warned that combustible insulation was being used widely in the industry, but did not act on that either. In fact, in the next couple of years, the limits on combustibles were further weakened with the use of desktop studies being accepted
insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/key-…

And so we arrived in June 2017 - after nearly 40 years of deregulation and missed warnings. A highly combustible cladding system was installed on the outside of a block with a stay put policy and a series of other fire safety defects. 72 people lost their lives.

This is the story which has been stitched together from leaks, FOI requests and scraps in the public domain. On Monday the inquiry can join up these dots with the full disclosure of what was happening behind the scenes in these years.

I haven't even got into a number of other areas in which fire safety policy was deficient in this period - the reliance on stay put, the disregard of disabled residents, light touch risk assessments, no sprinklers, general poor build quality

This really is a huge story: it's a massive failure of the British state which contributed to the deaths of 72 people and directly affects millions in dodgy flats today. Tune in to the @grenfellinquiry 10am on Monday to pick it up.