The charred hulk of Grenfell Tower still looms darkly over west London, a standing reproach to an industry that has relied all too often on shortcuts and botched building practices. A report in The Times today exposes another dimension in the entangled bureaucratic backdrop to the fire in June. The head of a government body set up to investigate the Grenfell blaze, we report, worked with a private company to help to certify building materials including cladding panels similar to those used on the tower.
Sir Ken Knight, formerly the government chief fire officer, was appointed to head a panel of four industry experts with the brief of offering up immediate safety measures after the Grenfell tragedy. It was a position of great trust. An estimated 80 people died in the block when the building’s cladding caught light and fire swept through corridors and flats. The national mood was one of raw shock and there was a justified demand for independent and expert guidance. His panel is now conducting large-scale tests on aluminium cladding used in blocks across Britain.
Yet Sir Ken has also been serving as the chairman of a private company’s “impartiality committee”, signing off on fire reports for building materials and façade cladding. He says that he was not paid for his role but there is a potential conflict of interest. As one critic said: “Anybody signing certificates of cladding and then chairing an independent expert panel made up of people involved in cladding has got to declare their interest.”
No complex tragedy has a single cause. The factors feeding into the Grenfell tragedy include the suitability of building regulations, the way they were implemented, the cost squeeze on contractors and the nature of social housing. Underpinning all these elements was the culture of the modern construction industry, the temptation to cut corners on health and safety in the face of short-term commercial pressures. That is why Sir Ken must urgently clarify his position. So far 111 buildings have failed fire-safety tests and high-rise residents everywhere need quick and trustworthy reassurance.
The former residents of the tower demand no less. Their miserable situation is being politicised, heated up by the rhetoric of class warfare as activists demand that the wealthy owners of neighbouring properties be penalised if they do not live in their houses. It is true that the rehousing is proceeding slowly. Kensington and Chelsea council has made 169 offers of accommodation to the survivors but only 46 have been accepted. Their wish not to be shunted from hotels to temporary accommodation is understandable; they need a settled existence and space to grieve. The answer is not to requisition private property but to build or buy social housing units, efficiently, swiftly and compassionately.
Advertisement
The government, criticised in the aftermath of the fire for its sluggish response, has at last crafted a co-ordinated plan. Apart from its building-safety programme, in which government works with housing providers, schools and hospitals to identify problem buildings, it is looking at building regulations, setting up mental-support teams for bereaved families and measuring the air quality around the tower for asbestos and particulates. It now communicates frequently with the survivors.
All these efforts, however, have to be underpinned by a sense of trust in the authorities. Sir Ken has some explaining to do.
We reported that Sir Ken Knight had been accused of a conflict of interest over his role at Warrington Certification, and we described him as a “Grenfell Tower inquiry chief”. We should clarify that Sir Ken is chairman not of the main Grenfell Tower inquiry (which is chaired by Sir Martin Moore-Bick) but of a separate expert panel set up by the government to advise on immediate safety action to be taken after the fire. Sir Ken has asked us to reiterate that his role as chairman of Warrington Certification’s impartiality committee was to sign off on the impartiality of the certification scheme as a whole and not to certify individual products. Our article also reported that a former chief fire officer had said that an individual in Sir Ken’s position “has got to declare their interest”, and our leading article in the same edition commented that Sir Ken “has some explaining to do”. Sir Ken has also asked us to reiterate that he had in fact declared his chairmanship of the impartiality committee and resigned from it on taking the chairmanship of the government advisory panel. We are happy to emphasise these points.