Two days after the Grenfell Tower fire, the UK government mounted a rebuttal operation to counter potentially damaging reports that building regulations had allowed the use of combustible cladding, the public inquiry has heard.
As families searched frantically for missing loved ones, Brian Martin, the official in charge of fire safety building regulations at the Ministry of Housing, Local Government and Communities, circulated a pre-written rebuttal of press claims that the plastic-filled panels that fuelled the inferno were allowed in the UK but not abroad.
Martin contacted Diane Marshall, now operations director at the National House Building Council (NHBC), which provides building control services, asking her to “say this (or something similar) in public” to counter critical reporting that the government’s building control system had allowed the west London council block to be wrapped in combustible materials.
The contractors and designers of Grenfell’s disastrous refurbishment have claimed they believed the works met fire safety regulations and the works were signed off by building control officials at the borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The rules were beset by ambiguity but the inquiry has already found the scheme as built at Grenfell, using aluminium composite material (ACM) panels with a polyethylene (PE) core, failed to comply.
Ministers and government officials are facing cross-examination over their role in the lead-up to the fire, including the “bonfire of red tape” policy of David Cameron’s government and the failure to review fire safety rules after the fatal 2009 Lakanal House high-rise fire in south London.
On 16 June 2017, Martin emailed Marshall: “Apologies in advance for asking, but I’ve been asked to prepare a rebuttal of the assertion that PE cored ACM panels comply with the guidance in ADB [approved document B guidance to the building regulations]. I’ve also been asked if an independent expert would be willing to say this [or something similar] in public? Can you consider the attached and let me know.”
Marshall said she wasn’t surprised to receive this but, asked by counsel to the inquiry Richard Millett QC if it was appropriate that the government approached her with a “pre-prepared script in support of government” after the fire, she said it was “unusual”.
Attached was a summary of an article in the Times newspaper that asserted Grenfell’s cladding panels “conform to UK standards but are prohibited in other countries”.
The lines suggested were: “We would dispute the assertion that a polyethylene core panel is acceptable for use under current building regulations” and that guidance stated that the external envelope of a building should not provide a medium for fire spread.
The script suggested saying: “Unmodified polyethylene would not meet the definition of ‘limited combustibility’ … As such it should not be used as a cladding material on buildings over 18m in height.”
Marshall responded suggesting NHBC might not seem sufficiently independent.
Asked whether the script was consistent with the government’s previous approach to allowing use of ACM panels, she said “the definition of filler was open to interpretation”.
The inquiry continues.
