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I guess the old thread will be closed now (stw search function doesn't find it anyway).
Looks like there is a lot of blame to spread around...
Manufacturers of cladding products – which were “by far the largest contributor” to the fire – were found to have engaged in “systematic dishonesty”, and used “deliberate and sustained strategies” to make their products appear safe
Arconic, the company which made the cladding panels on the tower’s exterior, are found to have “deliberately concealed” the safety risk; two firms which produced insulation - Celotex and Kingspan - were found to have “misled”
“Incompetent” companies involved in the 2011 refurbishment of the tower – Studio E and Harley Facades – are found to bear “significant” responsibility for the disaster, while project manager Rydon’s oversight of the work led to a culture of “buck-passing”
“Many opportunities” to address the risks posed by flammable cladding were missed by governments from the early 1990s onwards, culminating in “decades of failure”
The 2010 Conservative-Liberal Democrat government is strongly criticised for its focus on cutting regulation, which led to safety matters being “ignored, delayed or disregarded”
Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea council and its social housing arm, the Tenant Management Organisation, had a “persistent indifference to fire safety, particularly the safety of vulnerable people”
London Fire Brigade lacked a strategy to evacuate the building once they had lost control, and had an “unfounded assumption” the type of blaze which occurred at Grenfell Tower could not happen
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c623vrw92rrt
It sounds like it's a pretty scathing report, but will anyone actually be held to account & perhaps prosecuted? I really hope so.
Very moving to hear all of the names read out. All preventable.
It was difficult to not get upset when the names were read out, just thinking about how they died, I had to switch it off.
Imagine if there was a Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act that the CPS could use to charge those responsible in the companies.
Hey,
Another one that Cameron truly fsck'd up by de-regulation. I know the Tory's cannot be entirely blamed but holy.f, is there anything they didn't actually fug up. I read yesterday Tugendhat says they need to be taken seriously again, or words to that affect. What a bunch of self serving arseholes that shouldn't of been allowed to run anything but a tap...
JeZ
The problems with this cladding were known about from the early 90s, the cladding was installed in 2011, the year after the torie/lib dems were elected. Their actions may have made the matter worse but labour were in power for far longer without acting.
This is a failure of the whole political class not just one party. Neoliberalism and greed have been allowed to override quality of life and safety for far too long. It is a systematic failure of what we value as a nation greed before humanity, and politicians from all major parties have driven this attitude.
We all know what ‘removing red tape’ really meant. If not letting people get away with murder, then letting them get away with corporate manslaughter
Plenty of people knew that cladding was flammable and dangerous, but whether it was to hit their budget or to make their bonus, they nodded it through with a ‘fingers crossed, it’ll probably be ok’
I read some of the evidence from the sales and marketing guy of the manufacturer who said jokingly in an email “all we seem to do is lie to people’ regarding the safety of their product and their fabricated test results
Will any of them see prison? Of course not. This is Great Britain. Like the officers at Hillsborough or the bankers who planted a bomb at the heart of our economy, they’ll all waltz off to get on with their well-remunerated lives, entirely free from the consequences of their actions.
That’s the way we do things in this country. Zero accountability because it’s only ‘little people’ who died
Imagine if there was a Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act that the CPS could use to charge those responsible in the companies.
From The Guardian
Detectives from the Metropolitan police’s criminal investigation said they would spend 12 to 18 months poring over the findings “line by line” before possible charges. These could include corporate manslaughter, gross negligence manslaughter, fraud, perverting the course of justice and misconduct in public office.
The Crown Prosecution Service is yet to make any charging decisions and any trials are not expected to start until 2027.
So it could still happen, if we just wait for a few more years. Not particularly rapid these wheels of justice are they?
This is a failure of the whole political class not just one party. Neoliberalism and greed have been allowed to override quality of life and safety for far too long. It is a systematic failure of what we value as a nation greed before humanity, and politicians from all major parties have driven this attitude.
Agreed doesn't matter who is in power, lobbying and collusion between business and politics happens all the time no matter what branding the politician. It will continue to happen under this Labour government and whoever comes next.
https://twitter.com/SaulStaniforth/status/1831234112092266718?s=19
Pickles.... dont bother me im a busy man. I do hope hes charged 1st
Presumably other countries took action when the dangers of such cladding were known?
NB - I'm expecting corroboration that UK deregulation caused the problem, not looking to excuse it in any way.
IIRC the company suppling the cladding was French owned and specifically targeted the UK market due to the lax regulatory framework.
EDIT: I’ve just dug out the article from the Guardian ‘Long Read’ a couple of years ago. It’s shocking stuff
A merry-go-round of buck-passing’: inside the four-year Grenfell inquiry
Presumably other countries took action when the dangers of such cladding were known?
There was a similar disaster in Spain recently. I think they had already outlawed the cladding, but fixing 25+ years of installations will take just as long.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68378968
I listended to the BBC Radio work series last week and the failures were there to see and predict.
Building standards were set aside for "system design" to be encoraged.
Cladding was fire tested and then sold out of context of those very tests.
Its a shocking example of parts of British Industry and Local/National Government.
Those 72 people who lost their lives I cant imagine the pain of their death and the effects upon family and friends.
This will become a re-run of Hillsborough, the details will be different but the underlying circumstances are similar.
'Little People' died because of the result of the actions of a few 'Big Cheeses' with a lot to lose financially and status-wise.
AFAIK no one in positions of responsibility at Hillsborough has seen the inside of a cell in relation to it.
No one will for Grenfell either.
I can't imagine how survivors and family must feel - and I'm sure their push for justice will be keeping some of them going full-stop. But I am deeply sceptical about their chances given the British establishment and their ability to evade, defer, and thwart any attempt to impose accountability on them.
Those 72 people who lost their lives I cant imagine the pain of their death and the effects upon family and friends.
Especially as it was all so easily avoidable. The warnings were repeatedly flagged up, but absolutely nothing was done about it. There was a collective “yeah… whatever….” from those in authority who’s job it was to prevent this kind of disaster
As with Hillsborough, another case of repeated warnings being ignored, absolutely nobody will ever be held accountable, you can be certain of that
binners
Full Member
IIRC the company suppling the cladding was French owned and specifically targeted the UK market due to the lax regulatory framework.EDIT: I’ve just dug out the article from the Guardian ‘Long Read’ a couple of years ago. It’s shocking stuff
A merry-go-round of buck-passing’: inside the four-year Grenfell inquiry
So many parts of that are sickening. Lobbyists getting the standards reduced, sub-standard test requirements, companies cheating the tests. It's ****ing disgusting. If I were running the country I'd have their ****ing heads on a pike. You just know some fat **** CEOs walked away with big bunse for getting it permitted as well. Disgusting.
Eric Pickles (now a Lord) was the minister in charge of fire safety before the Grenfell fire.
Reading that just beggars belief.....
He was minister in charge of fire safety.... and now he is a lord.
If I was the parent of someone who died in that fire then I pray the lord would grant me strength to go full ak.
Not particularly rapid these wheels of justice are they?
Then especially for the corporate manslaughter they can just throw money at it to slow things down. Unless the fines look cheap enough it can just be written off.
I wonder how some of the people sleep when rereading their messages laughing off the risks.
I think that this is different from Hillsborough and the sub postmaster scandal, in that there isn't an easy made scapegoat. In those cases they tried to lay the blame at the feet of the victims. In this case the enquiry at least seems to have been run with honest intent, and has apportioned blame where it is due.
I see no signs of a cover up in todays report, whether that actually results in action we will have to wait and see. But at least this report has not sought to blame the victims and their families in the way Hillsborough and the postmaster scandal did.
Now who are all the people who bemoan 'health and safety gone mad' when it comes to stuff like this ?
There's plenty involved in this sorry, avoidable mess, that need to swing from a rope for their acts. Starting with Cameron.
(BTW who sold the BRE ? I presume it was Major's Gov, just like the railways ?)
EDIT - yep, Edwina-shagger John Major's Tory Gov sold off the BRE in March 1997.
(BTW who sold the BRE ? I presume it was Major’s Gov, just like the railways ?)
Wikipedia says it happened in March 1997, so yeah in his last few months in power.
In those cases they tried to lay the blame at the feet of the victims
You mean a bit like this…
https://Twitter.com/londoneconomic/status/1831293493085409623?s=46&t=1lK7Dw1b6RqGJyvufO-trQ
You mean a bit like this…
Exactly.
A man who likely had significant business investments in all the lying, cheating and conniving companies who created this lethal system.
Don't forget the impact on the individuals in the emergency services on the night and in the site clearing work afterwards.
I've a pal who was in the building on that night, in the course of duty; it has had a profound effect on his life. I think it's reasonably clear that the fire service were misled in the evidence given to them when carrying out their site fire risk assessments and evac plans. If all of the effective material standards and fire protections that they were advised of had been there and properly fitted, then the 'sit tight' instruction would have been a valid approach. They weren't and it wasn't the right approach that night. I too would like to see some serious consequences for guilty individuals over this.
The fire brigade still seem to be essentially getting criticised for working on the basis that the building and its cladding should be fit for purpose and that all the essential safety features weren't fictional. It definitely seems like the reason their action plan didn't work was because of all that systematic dishonesty, deliberate concealment of safety risks, intentional misleading, and incompetent refurbishment and the culture of buck-passing. No different to, say, turning up at an industrial unit and discovering it's full of ilelgally stored hazardous chemicals.
This is long but worth reading.
It's all very indicative of the Bitish attitudes to rules and regulation. We all love a good unless it applies to us then people look for every weasel way around the rules. Our government constantly undermines regulation by utterly failing to enforce it an that applies to traffic offences through to building regulation environmental standards. We don't fund or support the regulators. Regulation of the private sector should be a core responsibility of government in a capitalist economy.
The suggestion that the complexities of testing materials and following safety standards appear to have overwhelmed the professionals involved in a £10m reclad of a council tower block was unnerving.
More disturbing still was how familiar much of the evidence felt from our own working lives. When witnesses, presented with their own email trails, admitted that they “didn’t open the attachment” that contained some vital instruction or information, it was not a shock. This is business in the 21st century.
When the inquiry publishes its final report in 2023, it may find that the fire was a result of the way we work – deluged with unread emails, constantly overstretched, walled off from the consequences of our actions, barely understanding the whole system.
This quote from the Guardian article rams home to me all the reasons I job hopped for a few years before getting the hell out of frontline construction. The expectations are completely unrealistic and I fear the extra (whilst clearly necessary) scrutiny and assurance procedures will just make things worse.
I notice they're also proposing more oversight and regulation of Building Control. Again, I'm entirely for this if it prevents tragedy, but my experience of Building Control is that they're already hellishly overworked, people signed off with stress and on anti-depressants for anxiety. Subjecting them to additional oversight and regulation will achieve nothing goid unless they're given more help, more time, perhaps, god forbid, more training.
I think all those concluding that this is endemic and requires complete overhaul of the industry are exactly correct, but government proposals I've seen so far don't fill me with hope.
It's not just the UK, virtually the whole of the western Governments have prostrated themselves before the oligarchs, lobbyists and corporations way before they think of the people.
Regulation of the private sector should be a core responsibility of government in a capitalist economy.
We don’t have a capitalist economy though, we have a corporatist one. This report just highlights that at every level.
Rich, profit-obsessed corporations successfully lobbied governments to get standards constantly reduced to prop up their bottom lines. They then deliberately lied and lied and lied so as not to meet even these minimal standards.
Successive governments, at every level, have been entirely complicit in this, with their refusal to even enforce the bare minimum standards and endorse a Wild West attitude to safety standards with enormous implications for peoples lives
People need to be held accountable for all this, but does anyone think for a second that will actually happen?
It’s all very indicative of the Bitish attitudes to rules and regulation. We all love a good unless it applies to us then people look for every weasel way around the rules.
Just caught some of the BBC coverage and their correspondent was talking about a societal pattern with Hillsborough, the infected blood scandal, Bloody Sunday.
Except it's not our end of society, it's those with the position to ignore the rules and cover it up.
but will anyone actually be held to account & perhaps prosecuted? I really hope so.
If there is any prosecution it will be the manufacturers. Apparently the council building, planning and design teams know nothing about the jobs they work on.
but my experience of Building Control is that they’re already hellishly overworked, people signed off with stress and on anti-depressants for anxiety
The Guardian article from a couple of years ago quotes the fact that the council made ten people with oversight over building regulation redundant, leaving just one person who at the time of the Grenfell proposals being submitted was personally responsible for around 130 construction projects. What chance did he have of spitting details about the cladding on one building. He was literally drowning in paperwork and would have had no chance against well-funded developers cutting corners to save a few quid. Imagine being that poor bastard?
Imagine being that poor bastard?
Pretty much most public sector staff are in a similar position, and a surprising number have responsibilities that could result in deaths.
We really seem to have no value on either safety or even basic competence.
Pickles…. dont bother me im a busy man. I do hope hes charged 1st
I rather he was hounded down till the heart attack finally catches up with him, a ****ing odious lump of gristle.
Yes the council leaving one person with oversight that lied about his qualifications and the firms involved still getting governments contracts
Grenfell was just total corruption there was no mistake.
The after effect of Grenfell will be felt within the construction industry for a long time and rightfully so, especially when there seems to have been the fault of everyone involved, from the client and design consultants to the manufacturers and installers. What I'm seeing in the projects I'm involved in, is the client and consultants pushing the design responsibilities onto the contractor and subcontractors more and more, and just distancing themselves from any decision that could come back and bite them, especially where fire is concerned. But, as far as I'm aware, they still have ultimate responsibility still as they are the one appointing the and paying the contractors and subcontractors. You can't just delegate your responsibilities and assume someone will sort it for you.
RIP to the 72 who tragically lost their lives.
Did the CDM coordinator (now called the Principal Designer) get a mention in the report?
Below was their duties on a project, which as far as I'm concerned should have helped highlight the issues in design, materials, contractors etc.
Duties of CDM Co-ordinator - Checklist
Notify the project to the Health & Safety Executive.
Advise and assist the client with the client's duties for engaging or appointing competent and adequately resourced organisations.
Assist the client with ensuring that suitable management arrangements are made for the project (This may include the performance of design audits and construction site audits and inspections)
Identify and collect the pre-construction information and provide it in a convenient form to designers, the principal contractor and other contractors.
Advise the client on the sufficiency of the time allocated for all phases of the project.
Ensure that the design complies with the requirements of the regulations, including any designs undertaken by designers who are not based within Great Britain.
Ensure that the designers and the principal contractor co-operate.
Assist the client with verifying the sufficiency of the construction phase plan to commence construction and the adequacy of the welfare provisions.
Prepare the health and safety file, or review and update an existing health and safety file, and pass it the client at the end of construction.
Myself and a colleague were returning from a late job ( ironically a fire suppression service). We drove past the building on the A40, I couldn’t believe the scale of the fire.
I’m not surprised by the degree of negligence, Fire protection is often seen as an expensive inconvenience, I still have to explain that expanding foam, even if it’s red isn’t a suitable material for fire Stopping.
I crapped myself when I’d heard about a fire somewhere where I’d serviced a system, was very thankful it worked correctly and no one was hurt, I don’t know how these people live with themselves.
The worst thing about all of this is the fact that hardly anything has been done to rectify this. 7 years down the line there are thousands of buildings in the UK with flammable cladding on them, while everyone passes the buck to avoid paying for their failure, corruption and incompetence.
The next Grenfell could quite easily happen tonight, with the same result, yet all the people who are responsible for the fire care about is covering their own arses.
7 years later they haven’t even identified all the buildings at risk. FFS!
binners
Full Member
The worst thing about all of this is the fact that hardly anything has been done to rectify this.
The reporter on ITV News at 10 was absolutely scathing in what he said tonight.
Basically that they were poor and had no voice and the powerful took advantage of that.
... and that nothing at all had changed since then.
What I’m seeing in the projects I’m involved in, is the client and consultants pushing the design responsibilities onto the contractor and subcontractors more and more, and just distancing themselves from any decision that could come back and bite them, especially where fire is concerned.
+1 it's definitely having an effect in our line of work & we're the contractors so often get the shitty end of the stick, but it does make it more onerous for the clients when we have to encroach into their precious sq footage to make sure we 100% comply with their interpretation of the regulations.
With so many parties being highlighted as at fault I do wonder if it makes any prosecutions more difficult as the defence will be be its everyone else highlighted in the report not us.
With so many parties being highlighted as at fault I do wonder if it makes any prosecutions more difficult as the defence will be be its everyone else highlighted in the report not us.
This is why it'll take the police years to sort this out. They'll work closely with the CPS to understand the inquiry evidence and how it relates to their ongoing criminal investigation into nineteen organisations and many more individuals
Possible legal considerations for just one possible offence summarised here https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/corporate-manslaughter
Pretty much most public sector staff are in a similar position, and a surprising number have responsibilities that could result in deaths.
The Local Authority Building Control argument to some extent is a red herring. The majority of qualified Building Inspectors now work in the private sector. A significant proportion of the companies they work for were formed either when entire local authority departments jumped ship or were hived off to save money. On the whole these companies do a really good job and are far more aware of their responsibilities than the LA departments they replaced due to flatter management structures which means that the buck stops ar closer to the decision than it used to and due the introduction of specific qualification requirements brought in by the Building Safety Act.
The really scary bit is the BRE and BBA who re supposed to be the arbitors of the safety of products and systems. If a cladding system ot other building product has an Aggrement Certificate and Fire Testing, as long as the design includes all the elements of that system and it is being used in the circumstances described in the certificate Building Control Officers are pretty much powerless to stop its use. These organisations were supposed to be the gold standard which were supposed to give people in the construction industry the confidence that manufacturers' claims about a product had been appropriately verified.
Some of the comments in the report are a bit like asking individual doctors to carry out their own drug testing because NICE can no longer be trusted.
There is blame all round but basically its a result of procurement processes being so heavily weighted on the lowest bid that none of the chains of the process are properly resourced.
We can and should blame politicians for this but its also a societal issue where as long as somethoing is cheap and delivered quickly we don't care if the Kitemark or other safety accreditation is a knock off
Imagine if there was a Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act that the CPS could use to charge those responsible in the companies.
unfortunately Corporate Manslaughter is only for organisations not the individuals who manage them. Pinning manslaughter on “the individual at the top” of an organisation is really difficult.
@Richie_B - thanks for that. That’s a really interesting insight in to how things work in the real world
Presumably other countries took action when the dangers of such cladding were known?
a cladding guy on the radio seemed to say no - even now such cladding is still being installed in *some* countries. Which means the companies who supply it are still selling it, presumably knowing it will be used on high rises?
some countries had tighter building regs / processes anyway but not all, and not all of those regs/processes are robust.
Did the CDM coordinator (now called the Principal Designer) get a mention in the report?
Normally checking that a building system had the appropriate fire testing, Aggrement Certificate, Building Control sign off, and was being installed safely by a competent contractor the majority of those issues would be satisfied. If the BRE and BBA are not to be trusted there is pretty much no way of achieving a significant proportion of the items on that list.
What I’m seeing in the projects I’m involved in, is the client and consultants pushing the design responsibilities onto the contractor and subcontractors more and more, and just distancing themselves from any decision that could come back and bite them, especially where fire is concerned.
Since Grenfell most PI Insurance policies specifically exclude cladding, or pretty much any other element which has a bearing on the Building Safety Act relating to complex buildings. This means that to work within terms of their insurance cover there isn't a huge degree of choice on that.
The fire brigade still seem to be essentially getting criticised for working on the basis that the building and its cladding should be fit for purpose and that all the essential safety features weren’t fictional. It definitely seems like the reason their action plan didn’t work was because of all that systematic dishonesty, deliberate concealment of safety risks, intentional misleading, and incompetent refurbishment and the culture of buck-passing.
no I don’t think the criticism is on stay in place as a fundamental concept, it’s that the chain of command stuck to that for far too long when it should have been quite clear that something was wrong with the major underlying assumption - that the fire would be containable.
further, that this wasn’t the first time they’d encountered this sort of problem - they made little on no change after Lanakal House.
the phase 2 report makes quite a lot of comments on how they dealt with the volume of calls and getting the right information to where it was needed at the scene; even if you didn’t imagine a fire of this scale - surely terrorist attacks have similar potential volume of calls issues. Many of the challenges fire fighters faced on the day were not surprising to those involved, but the organisation seems to have ignored problems like radio coverage, sharing risk information and training because that’s how it has always been done.
No different to, say, turning up at an industrial unit and discovering it’s full of ilelgally stored hazardous chemicals.
And then treating it like it’s an empty shed when clearly it’s much more lively that that - and telling the many neighbours phoning to say materials keep exploding and landing in their garden to keep their windows shut because that’s the script, and not having a system on management that ties together what the control room is hearing, the fire fighters are seeing and saying “oh shit, the rule book might have to go out the window”.
i don’t think anyone is criticising the individual fire fighters, nor the junior officers who first dealt with it by following protocol - its that the organisation never seemed to consider that at some point it would encounter scenarios outside the plan, despite actually having seen them in London and elsewhere; and for knowing their were weaknesses in systems but never having the leadership to address them. Thats pretty damming - but I think you could look at many public sector organisations which we assume are highly professional because the individuals on the ground do their very best in difficult circumstances but the management chain actually have become institutionalised and can’t see the wood for the trees. Cynically some might say that by the time you work through the ranks in these organisations you are actually on a path of least resistance to retirement and your OBE rather than looking to drive institutional change. Probably the selection and promotion criteria bias “safe pair of hand” rather than radical modernisation!
I think you could look at many public sector organisations which we assume are highly professional because the individuals on the ground do their very best in difficult circumstances...
Police and paramedics have their own independent colleges of professional practice that licence aspects of training nationally within a standard curriculum. You can train locally if you're licensed, but without a licence you have to buy training in from a licensed provider
This licensed training also bestows certain legal benefits, e.g. carrying firearms, dog handlers, police drivers, etc.
The fire service doesn't have this. Perhaps firefighters on here have more of an insight into this??
Timba - yes I noticed the creation of a fire service college was a recommendation. Which I thought was odd, because I went to what I thought was the National Fire Service College in Morton on March about 30 years ago - (not for fire service training)…
I got the impression that services in England use it for training senior officers and little else
It also sells training worldwide and is more of a commercial venture
I'm speaking as someone who's only ever used the canteen though, which is why it'd be interesting to hear from a firefighter 🙂
One of the things with organisations like the firebrigade* is the lack of staff "churn" when everyone is effectively promoted from within, they get institutionalised into set methodologies. In most organisations there is staff turnover at all levels, that often means people experienced in other methodologies come into the company and can compare different ways of doing things through experience.
We have the same problem where I work, we get given projects to implement new technology, but the requirements want it to work like old technologies and the organisation is frequently unwilling to change business processes to match the way new technology is meant to be implemented. It is part operational arrogance and a bit of fear of change into the unknown.
Not sure how you deal with that in such an organisation though, I guess international fire service benchmarking and assignments are the only way i can think of.
*I don't have any experience of the fire brigade, but have worked for other government services and the NHS.
Fatty Pickles exemplifies the old-school Tory turd. Not a shouty, ranty arsewipe like Gullis. He always came across as exactly what he's been shown to be here. A lazy, dismissive, bluff, crass 'chum' to big business owners who oiled the wheels of government for a lot (a huge amount) of free lunches.
He thinks he's better than the rest of us. Simple.
I crapped myself when I’d heard about a fire somewhere where I’d serviced a system, was very thankful it worked correctly and no one was hurt, I don’t know how these people live with themselves.
A mate had inspected it, electrically, a couple of months earlier. He had highlighted a large number of faults that needed rectifying, along with recommendations about the fire safety of the building (where the electrical installation could cause a fire etc).
On the night of the fire, he got a call at 5am telling him to turn on his tv to see the news. He was very worried, but, on reading his report again, there was nothing he had said that was wrong, once he had passed on his report, it was up to the Landlords to rectify the failings.
On a similar vein, I was working on 4 blocks of flats 2 years ago. I had my doubts about the safety systems being installed, sprinklers, firemans lifts etc. My fears were found to be true, the Design was totally wrong, and not compliant with Building Regulations (the electrical safety systems should be (electrically) independent of the general installation, these were not, and had no back up supply). I mentioned it to the Site Manager, he coudlnt be less bothered about it, saying if that is what the design says, do it like it says.
Ex Firefighter here, 2 years retired. The Fire service college runs all-sorts of courses, including, as stated above, courses for foreign services.
I did a 5 day junior officers course there which was essentially practical training in running an incident untill more senior managers turned up.
They also train the trainers who go back to their own county training centres, training us in subjects such as Breathing apparatus/live fire or RTC etc, thereby ensuring some standardisation of practice. They also train more senior managers in specialist subjects like chemical incidents, NBC , etc.
So really useful applicable training.
My own experience of Moreton was of excellent teaching staff and incident grounds, but like everything else in the public sector in the last decade or so, suffering from systemic under investment.
I just want to add that we received much value from reports carried out by the FBU into incidents like Shirley towers in Southampton, where lessons were learnt the hardest way. These reports were dissected by our training departments and fed into our training.
Not sure how this worked in London though.I worked for a small county FRS.
I read the full 50 odd page executive summary. So a weak and difficult to understand set of building regulations which failed to capture risks identified as long as 30 years earlier, overseen by fractured regulators who were split across multiple bodies, partially sold into the private sector and seemingly both incompetent, under resourced and in bed with product manufacturers, mixed with ill equipped and under resourced building control bodies who were also partially public and partially privately owned, and a bunch of contractors, designers and clients who didn’t know or understand their role fully, were working to the lowest price possible and passed the buck between each other, then sprinkled with manufacturers who knowingly misled and lied about their products and sold them here because they knew our regulation was weak.
It’s a wonder it doesn’t go wrong far more often frankly.
I mean I know that’s how it is and has been for a long time because I work in the industry, but seeing it written in no uncertain terms is pretty damning. Sadly I don’t think things will change much as long as the industry works on the lowest bidder at every junction and incredibly tight margins and high risk/low investment for too many parts of the supply chain. You can regulate and oversee as much as you like but sadly some companies will still throw their innovation at working around this instead of genuinely improving things.
+1 airvent. Lowest price competitive tendering has a lot to answer for as the root cause.
It’s a wonder it doesn’t go wrong far more often frankly.
Over 4000 buildings in the UK with similar cladding still to be replaced says it does happen a lot. Just thankfully building fires are few and far between.
Back when I was selling insulation in about 2006-2009 this was a know issue in the industry. The people I worked for struggled to persuade people of woodfibre board having reasonable fire performance - heck we used to put it on a vertical stand and be chatting to buyers while holding a blow torch on it for a good few minutes. It just charred but no real flames.
Meanwhile we would then aim the blow torch at the offcut of Celotex of Kingspan and watch them both melt and burn upwards in a melting, acrid smokey mess.
Yet the plastic stuff all had fire certification and we didn't even put ours in for high rise, even though on the continent it is used on higher buildings.
Disturbing statistics.
More than a quarter of firefighters exposed to toxic smoke during the Grenfell Tower fire have had long-term health disorders, a study shows
Firefighters have to be some of the bravest folk around. Run into a burning building? No thanks!
Other folk face dangers in their jobs but firefighters it must be nearly every job!