The head of a government fire-safety panel set up after the Grenfell Tower tragedy has been accused of a conflict of interest after it emerged that he helped to certify building materials including cladding panels similar to those used on the west London block.
Sir Ken Knight, the government’s former chief fire officer, has been a director of Warrington Certification since 2004.
As chairman of the Cheshire-based company’s “impartiality committee” he signed dozens of certificates for manufacturers who paid for products to be tested for fire safety.
One of those products was Reynobond FR, a slightly more fire-resistant version of the aluminium panels used to clad Grenfell Tower in 2014.
The 24-storey tower was destroyed by fire in the early hours of June 14, killing an estimated 80 people. Witnesses described the aluminium cladding panels as going up “like a matchstick”.
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Ronnie King, a former chief fire officer and honorary secretary of the parliamentary all party fire safety and rescue group, 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 and explain why they should be considered as independent.”
Sir Ken, 70, was appointed to lead a panel of four experts after Grenfell. The objective was to offer immediate measures to make buildings safe. The unpaid group is carrying out large-scale tests of panels of the sort used on tower blocks across the country.
The Department for Communities and Local Government said: “Sir Ken Knight declared to DCLG that he was chairman of Warrington Certification impartiality committee, and resigned . . . on taking up chairmanship of the expert advisory panel.”
Sir Ken said that his role on the impartiality committee was unpaid and was to approve the certification process rather than specific products.
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.