The final report on the Grenfell Inquiry is expected to untangle a complex web of blame and counter-blame between the parties responsible for the state of the tower before it caught fire.
On the last day of hearings in November 2022, Richard Millett KC, lead counsel to the inquiry, spent more than an hour and a half painstakingly explaining how the key players had sought to point the finger of culpability at one another.
As he approached his conclusion, he said to Sir Martin Moore-Bick, the inquiry chairman: “At this point it might be useful to show you what all of these different little maps of blame look like when merged.”
The following slide that flicked up onto the inquiry’s screens portrayed a barely credible labyrinth of interconnecting arrows.
Each one represented a moment during the long years since the tragedy when a participant in the inquiry–despite in many cases issuing statements of profound regret and apology–had appeared to blame others for the 2017 disaster that claimed 72 lives.
Many of the big names had as many arrows pointing towards them as they did pointing outwards.
These are some of the parties expected to come in for significant criticism when Sir Martin reports on the inquiry.
The local authority for Britain’s richest borough, the council is the owner and landlord of Grenfell Tower, which it ran through its Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO).
In that role it commissioned the building’s refurbishment in 2015-16 that ultimately led to the disaster.
The inquiry revealed that the management organisation was put under pressure from the council to keep the cost of the refurbishment down.
In the end, the project was completed for under £10 million.
It was also the council’s planning department that chose the cassette-shaped aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding.
It was heard that Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea officers accepted the deeply flawed safety certificates.
The council has since admitted its building control department should not have issued a completion certificate on the project.
Evidence has also emerged of worrying problems before the refurbishment and that officials knew about them.
Among the damning evidence heard by the inquiry was the fact that as far back as 2010 a leaseholder group had warned that the smoke alarm system in the building was malfunctioning.
Despite this, KCTMO took six years to attempt to fix it.
It was also revealed that the management organisation did not inform the residents about the problems with the system for at least a year, and that the council knew the apparatus was broken “beyond repair”.
Janice Wray, the former health, safety and facilities manager at KCTMO, wrote an email to a colleague in which she said: “Let’s hope our luck holds and there are no fires in the meantime.”
Kensington and Chelsea says it increased the budget for the refurbishment every time it was asked.
Elizabeth Campbell, Kensington and Chelsea leader, said: “This council should have done more to keep our residents safe before the fire, and to care for them in the aftermath.
“The council has been proactively honest and open about its own failings throughout the inquiry process, in line with our commitments to candour, as set out in the Hillsborough Charter.
“We know the report will be a hugely significant moment for the bereaved, survivors and the community.
“I will make sure that it is a hugely significant moment for this council too.
“We will look hard at the recommendations and what we need to do so we continue to become a better organisation as a lasting legacy from the tragedy.”
On Mr Millett’s “blame” slide for Kensington and Chelsea, arrows point outwards to the refurb construction firm, the architect, a third-party certification body, the cladding and insulation manufacturers, and the government.
The architect firm commissioned by Kensington and Chelsea to oversee the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower had no experience in overcladding high-rise residential buildings, the inquiry heard.
Nevertheless, it was chosen without a competitive procurement process or design contest.
Studio E kept its fees extremely low to win the contract.
Andzej Kuszell, the practice co-founder, has said his firm probably would not have been awarded the job if a competitive process had been in place.
During the inquiry, Bruce Sounes, the lead architect on the project, said he did not familiarise himself fully with fire safety regulations.
“I referred to it on occasion but I certainly didn’t read it from start to finish,” he said.
“Because it’s so wide-ranging, an architect will find themselves referring to specific sections to try and understand whether they are meeting their requirements.”
Mr Sounes sent a provisional fire strategy plan to a KCTMO official in April 2014.
However, according to an email seen by the inquiry, he warned them not to show it to the London Fire Brigade.
He warned that the fire service was “likely to support the severe interpretation of the regulations”.
The firm went into liquidation in 2020, owing £144,000 to its creditors.
According to the counsel to the inquiry, Studio E is one of the rare parties with plenty of blame arrows pointing at it, but none pointing the other way.
The construction firm chosen to carry out the refurbishment won the contract after bidding more than £500,000 less than its nearest rival.
What happened next is likely to form a major part of Sir Martin’s final report into the causes of the tragedy.
Rydon met secretly with KCTMO to discuss whether approximately £800,000 could be knocked off the project.
Ultimately, Rydon decided to cut costs by switching cladding from a non-combustible zinc option to ACM cladding.
Rydon believed it could make savings of between £419,627 and £576,973 by doing this. However, this is not what it told its clients at KCTMO.
Instead, the firm told KCTMO that the savings would be between £293,368 and £376,175.
Simon Lawrence, the contracts manager at Rydon, was asked about this at the inquiry.
He replied: “I would suggest that, although not my area of expertise, that Rydon took some of the saving for themselves.”
An email from Zak Maynard, Rydon’s commercial manager, in 2014, appears to support that.
“We are quids in!!” he wrote. Mr Maynard later told the inquiry this was a joke.
At the inquiry, Rydon appeared keen to point the finger of blame at the manufacturers of the products with which it completed the refurbishment, saying it could not be “blamed for the dishonest behaviour of Arconic, Celotex and Kingspan”.
The firm has put aside £26.7 million towards the settlement of civil claims arising from the fire.
The Ipswich-based company, which was bought in 2012 by French materials group Saint-Gobain, provided the majority of the foam insulation around Grenfell Tower.
It was aware that its rival Kingspan was providing insulation on high-rise buildings, despite regulations stipulating that such materials be of “limited combustibility”.
Keen to break into new markets, Celotex instructed Jonathan Roper, a young assistant products manager, who was fresh out of university, to find out how Kingspan was doing it.
The inquiry heard that he discovered that Kingspan had fire-tested its product, but that it should have only marketed it as a component of the whole system tested, rather than on its own.
Mr Roper said Celotex tested its insulation product behind a non-combustible cladding board in 2014.
When it failed, he claimed the firm then “over-engineered” the product to achieve a test pass by placing additional fire-resistant boards behind the cladding panel in subsequent tests.
These boards were not mentioned by Celotex in its marketing literature for the RS5000 product, which was sold at a discount of almost 50 per cent for use at Grenfell.
Mr Roper told the inquiry that Celotext was determined to market its insulation product as being suitable for use over 18 metres because Kingspan was already doing so.
Jamie Hayes, a former technical services officer at Celotex, told the inquiry he was the man who came up with the plan to boost the product’s chances of passing a test by adding fire-resistant boards, but he denied knowing that Celotex would conceal this detail in its subsequent marketing.
He said it was “a failure of moral fibre” that stopped him challenging the company when he eventually became aware.
Documents seen by the inquiry also show that Celotex and its owner was aware that the product would release toxic smoke when burned.
Celotex has said it had subsequently become aware of “facts” unknown to management at the time of the Grenfell fire and that six employees had left the company following disciplinary action.
A spokesman said: “Through its participation in the inquiry process and its own internal investigations, Celotex Limited has sought to understand and learn from the issues raised by the fire. As part of this work, independent safety tests commissioned following the review demonstrated the system described in Celotex RS5000 marketing literature met the relevant safety criteria.
“Celotex Limited does not design and install cladding systems and did not do so at Grenfell Tower. The design and construction of the facade at Grenfell Tower and the selection of the various components, were decisions made by construction industry professionals.”
On Mr Millett’s blame diagram, numerous arrows point outwards from Celotex.
The council, Rydon, Studio E and Arconic, the cladding manufacturer, are just some.
The company’s K15 plastic foam insulated around 5 per cent of Grenfell Tower.
The inquiry heard that the product passed a fire safety test in 2005 when it was placed behind non-combustible cladding.
This means it should only have been used on high-rise buildings as part of the exact system tested (Grenfell used combustible cladding).
Instead, it was marketed for general use on high-rise buildings.
After a slight chemical change to the product making it more flammable, the product underwent another fire test in 2007, the result of which was described as a “raging inferno”.
The inquiry was told that Philip Heath, a Kingspan technical manager, was contemptuous when a contractor suggested that K15 might not be suitable for buildings above 18 metres, saying: “[They’re] getting me confused with someone who gives a dam [sic].”
Kingspan has said: “We have apologised unreservedly and taken comprehensive, externally verified, measures to prevent recurrence and to ensure an explicit culture of integrity, honesty and compliance.”
The company denied that any of its testing, certification or marketing literature at the time of the supply of the product for use on Grenfell suggested that it was “non-combustible or of limited combustibility”.
The Building Research Establishment, a charitable organisation promoting building science in the UK, has said it will no longer work with Kingspan or Celotex.
Kingspan has blamed the Government, the cladding panels, and even the inquiry’s questions, according to Mr Millett.
Arconic Architectural Products SAS made the cladding panels on Grenfell Tower that caused the fire to spread so rapidly.
A subsidiary of a US metals giant, the company conducted a 2004 test of the aluminium composite material in cassette form, which found that it burnt 10 times as quickly and seven times as hot when not in that form.
The inquiry heard that Arconic described this as a “rogue result”.
The ACM cassette panels stayed on the market, and received a boost when the British Board of Agrement, a certifying body, issued a certificate stating that the ACM panels met the minimum standards for highrise buildings.
Arconic had put forward a successful test result for a riveted version of the ACM panel and a fire-retardant version, the inquiry heard, but it did not disclose the failed test on the cassette panel version.
Claude Schmidt, the president of Arconic’s French arm, said that a failure to volunteer the information about the test results was a “misleading half-truth”, rather than a deliberate concealment.
In an email to staff, Claude Wehrle, Arconic technical manager in France, said the ACM cassette panel did not achieve the minimum safety standard for use on high-rises in the EU, but added that this should be “VERY CONFIDENTIAL”.
Stephen Hockman KC, representing Arconic at the inquiry, said other companies had blamed it to create “a very convenient way of avoiding their own responsibility”.
The firm has said it supplied the ACM sheets specified by the design team on the Grenfell refurbishment and approved by Kensington and Chelsea.
“The fire was a terrible tragedy and as Arconic remembers the 72 people who died, our thoughts remain with the families, friends and all of those affected.”
The company has said ACM is “safe… as a building material if used correctly”.
In April 2023, Michael Gove, then housing secretary, placed heavy pressure on Arconic to increase its spending to help pay for cladding remediation work in light of the Grenfell fire.
Gove stated his frustration with the firm and how it had “not taken any responsibility–moral or financial–for their role in the Grenfell tragedy and building safety crisis. They’ve instead spent around £9 million per year on lawyers to defend themselves. I will use all tools at my disposal to make them pay”.
A spokesman for Arconic said: “Arconic Architectural Products was a core participant in the inquiry and has acknowledged its role as one of the material suppliers involved in the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower.
“The company respects the inquiry process. AAP cooperated fully with the work of the inquiry and will continue to engage with further legal processes. Together with other parties, AAP has made financial contributions to settlements for those affected, as well as to the restorative justice fund.”
Civil servants complained to the inquiry that the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), was possessed by an “appetite for deregulation” during the coalition years.
Brian Martin, a senior official in the department, was accused of ignoring a warning about the “widespread, historic and ongoing” use of ACM cladding in the UK, allegedly telling an architect who recommended tightening building standards: “Where’s the evidence? Show me the bodies.”
Mr Martin told the inquiry that “there were a number of occasions where I could have, potentially, prevented this happening”.
Evidence was shown in the inquiry that Mr Martin had thought the Lakanal House fire in Camberwell in 2009 was not severe enough to prompt safety reviews.
In documents seen by ITV News, Mr Martin said he did not need to “kiss the backside” of a coroner who suggested sprinklers be installed in tower blocks.
