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Grenfell Tower Inquiry diary week 22: ‘All we do is lie in here’

Insight11.12.2011.30 AM by Lucie Heath

In the third week of evidence from insulation giant Kingspan, the inquiry continued to uncover shocking details about the firm’s behaviour both before and after the Grenfell Tower fire. Lucie Heath reports

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This week the inquiry heard evidence mostly from Adrian Pargeter, director of technical, marketing and internal affairs at Kingspan, which produced the Kooltherm K15 insulation found on parts of Grenfell Tower.

It was a shorter week than normal after hearings were put on hold on Wednesday afternoon when a member of the inquiry team tested positive for COVID-19. But there were still a number of shocking revelations.

We also gained more insight into how widely some of the testing issues we have already learned about during the inquiry were known about at Kingspan.

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“It took four years between you first being told of the problem in 2016… to decide to withdraw that test. Do you accept that that is an extraordinarily long time?”

We already know that in October this year, Kingspan wrote to the Building Research Establishment (BRE) to withdraw tests that it had carried out on K15.

This letter revealed that Kingspan had been relying heavily on two fire tests, carried out in 2005 and 2014, to market K15, despite the fact neither test was carried out on the product actually being sold to the market.

This week we got to hear directly from the man who signed the letter to the BRE about exactly what was known within Kingspan prior to October 2020.

Mr Pargeter (above) told the inquiry he first learned that the 2005 tests had been carried out on an “old technology” version of K15 (which Kingspan stopped selling in 2006) four years ago, in late 2016.

He said he was not concerned about the information at the time because his colleague Gwyn Davies had told him “that the performance in fire would not have been any different”.

Mr Pargeter said that Mr Davies had no fire safety qualifications that he was aware of.

Despite being aware that the 2005 test had been carried out on a different product, Mr Pargeter did not include this information in his first witness statement to the inquiry in 2018.

“I think we were doing our investigations and we needed to be sure… we thought it could have been old tech and new tech. We needed to be sure exactly what it was,” he said as the explanation for this.

As for the 2014 test, Mr Pargeter said he had always been aware that a test had been carried out at that time on a research and development product, but that he had not realised this test was being used to market K15 until it was pointed out to him by Kingspan’s lawyers in preparation for the inquiry.

“If that was true, then you must accept that you had radically failed to a fundamental level in your obligations of safety in the role you held,” said Richard Millett, counsel to the inquiry, when questioning Mr Pargeter on his knowledge of the 2014 test.

“I certainly regret the fact that I missed that, but I don’t think it was a fundamental effect on fire safety error,” Mr Pargeter replied.

The inquiry also learned that Kingspan removed the 2005 test from its website in March 2019, more than a year and a half before taking the decision to finally withdraw the test. Mr Pargeter said the decision to remove the test from the website was taken by “the team involved in the inquiry”.

Following this, Kingspan took the decision to test the K15 product actually being sold to the market. The firm received a report confirming that K15 had passed this test in February 2020.

When asked what changed in the four years before finding out about the 2005 test and finally withdrawing the test in October 2020, Mr Pargeter said: “I think we were looking at it under a different light, obviously much more focus on it, and I think just the opinion then was it would be prudent to withdraw it at this stage.”

Mr Millett asked: “The only difference was the degree of scrutiny being applied to the question by the inquiry?”

“Potentially, yes,” Mr Pargeter replied.

“Your approach to this issue is not only dishonest but displayed a reckless disregard for human life”

In addition to the well-documented issues surrounding Kingspan’s 2005 and 2014 K15 tests, this week the inquiry also uncovered issues relating to the testing used by the insulation firm to prove that the product had achieved a ‘Class 0’ rating.

While Class 0 is not a relevant standard for the use of insulation on high rises, many in the construction industry misunderstood this and took it to mean that the product was safe to use on buildings taller than 18m. The claim that K15 was rated Class 0 often featured prominently in Kingspan’s marketing for the product.

But this week the inquiry learned that as of 2016, Kingspan had only ever tested the foil facer, rather than the whole K15 insulation product, when determining whether it could achieve Class 0.

The reason for this was a loophole in Approved Document B (ADB) of the building regulations of England and Wales, which said a product could be referred to as Class 0 if “the surface of a composite product” achieved a certain performance under testing. Kingpsan relied heavily on this interpretation of the building regulations to make its Class 0 claim.

The following exchange between Mr Millett and Mr Pargeter on Tuesday saw the latter stick to the company’s line that this is a fair way to interpret the building regulations.

Mr Millett asked: “So on your technical reading of ADB you could staple a foil facer to dynamite and put it on a building of above 18 metres and call it Class 0?”

Mr Parteger replied: “No, because you wouldn’t have a classification of Class 0 applied to a stick of dynamite. It wouldn’t be a requirement.”

Mr Millett continued: “Actually, what Kingspan were doing with your adoption of the view was pursuing a technical interpretation of ADB but not a… commonsense interpretation of ADB.”

Mr Parteger responded: “I think it’s a technical interpretation, but it’s on an insulation product, so it’s a commonsense approach as well.”

Following this, the inquiry was shown an email chain from 2016 in which several members of Kingspan’s marketing and technical team, including Mr Pargeter, debated whether they should refer to K15 as Class 0.

Two members of Kingspan’s technical team had been told by a fire engineer that they should be testing the entire product, however one employee said that the engineer had told him: “We are okay claiming class 0 from foil as it can be interpreted like that. Hes [sic] just got to take the fire engineer perspective and cover himself.”

The second employee replied: “Yeah, does seem a bit of a cheat though doesn’t it claiming Class 0 for just a facer test, when as you said its [sic] meant to be product as placed on the market.”

Shortly after this exchange, Kingspan carried out testing of the entire K15 composite product, and it failed to achieve Class 0.

Following this, Mr Pargeter told the inquiry he decided to continue marketing K15 as Class 0 in England and Wales, however Kingspan was forced to drop the phrase “low risk” from its marketing in Scotland because of differences in the fire regulations there.

The inquiry was then shown a shocking text message exchange between Arron Chalmers, technical project leader at Kingspan, and another employee, who joked about K15 being marketed as Class 0 despite it failing the test.

Examples of some of the texts are as follows:

“doesnt [sic] actually get class 0 when we test the whole product tho LOL!”

“WHAT we lied?”

“yeahhhh tested K15 as a whole – got class 1 [an inferior standard] wheyy lol”

"alls [sic] we do is lie in here"

Around that same time, Kingspan received an enquiry from a Scottish architect who was looking to confirm whether it was safe to install cavity barriers only every 20m on a building using K15, as K15 was rated Class 0.

Mr Chalmers flagged this query to Mr Pargeter in an email and said Kingspan could either “be honest” and inform the architect that cavity barriers will be needed every 10m or “blag it” and “ignore her direct question”.

There is no evidence that Kingspan ever informed the architect that K15 as a composite product had failed the Class 0 test.

“I’m bound to suggest to you, Mr Pargeter, that your approach to this issue is not only dishonest but displayed a reckless disregard for human life and safety,” said Mr Millett.

“No, I disagree,” replied Mr Pargeter.

“Did you not think it incumbent on you to ensure that you were not promoting the use of K15 with an ACM PE core?”

Also on Tuesday, the inquiry was shown a marketing brochure that Kingspan put together in 2015 as part of a campaign called ‘Routes to Compliance’. The point of the campaign was to educate the market on the various ways K15 could achieve compliance with the building regulations.

The document included a number of case studies of K15 being used with aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding with a polyethylene (PE) core, which is the same type of cladding used on Grenfell.

But the only study that had been carried out on K15 and ACM together had been on ACM with a fire-retardant core. Even then, this study relied on the K15 tests, which – as we have previously heard – were carried out on a different product to the one being sold to the market.

“Did you not think it incumbent on you as [head of marketing and technical] to ensure that you were not promoting the use of K15… with an ACM PE core?” Mr Millett (above) asked Mr Pargeter.

“No, it wouldn’t have occurred, not to me, I wasn’t aware of the differences in the ACM options,” said Mr Pargeter, adding that Kingspan was not “particularly au fait” with the difference between a PE and a fire-retardant core.

In addition to this marketing material, the inquiry was shown a letter sent by Kingspan to a contractor confirming that K15 could be installed at Spruce Court, a development in Salford using ACM with a PE core. The letter refers to a successful BS 8414 test, despite the fact that a BS 8414 test was never carried out on this system by Kingspan.

Mr Pargeter agreed that the letter was “misleading”.

“We are slowly educating the NHBC”

Another interesting piece of information touched on briefly by the inquiry on Tuesday came in the form of an internal Kingspan email sent by former employee Ivor Meredith.

“We are slowly educating the NHBC [National House Building Council] and worked with them and the BCA [Building Control Alliance] to produce BCA Technical Note 18,” the email said.

Technical Note 18 was a key piece of guidance released by the BCA in 2015. This note allowed those involved in a construction project to submit desktop studies of a particular system to building control if no fire test data existed for that system, and for these tests to be provided by a fire engineer rather than an accredited test house.

Following the fire at Grenfell, sector bodies have criticised the use of desktop studies.

When asked about this email during the inquiry this week, Mr Pargeter said he did “not recall” Kingspan “slowly educating” the NHBC or the BCA.

However, he did agree with Mr Millett that “both NHBC and Kingspan were keen to expand the routes to compliance”.

“This was a deliberate attempt to deceive Mr Betts and the select committee, wasn’t it?”

On Wednesday morning, the inquiry focused mainly on Kingspan’s actions after the Grenfell Tower fire, more specifically on its efforts to persuade the government against adopting a ban on combustible materials on high rises.

We learned that Kingspan hired a PR firm called Portland in the weeks after the fire. Together they created a “political engagement plan”, with the stated aim of getting Kingspan’s “message out to the people that matter”.

The plan had a list of key targets to reach out to, including then housing secretary Sajid Javid, Dame Judith Hackitt and members of the Housing, Communities and Local Government (HCLG) Select Committee.

“One of the key arguments that we need to win with political stakeholders is that combustible materials are no more dangerous that [sic] non-combustible materials when improperly installed,” one email from early 2018 read.

In another 2018 email titled “MHCLG Select Committee Lobbying”, one Kingspan employee said that Conservative MP and HCLG Committee member Kevin Hollinrake was “lukewarm” about Kingspan’s arguments and suggested setting up tests to demonstrate K15 performing similarly to a non-combustible insulation produced by Kingpsan’s competitor Rockwool.

Kingspan went on to set up two tests of non-combustible insulation in Ulster and Dubai. We saw several emails proving that on both occasions Kingspan designed the system being tested in a way that would ensure the Rockwool insulation performed as poorly as possible.

This included using “poor” cavity barriers and a cladding product that was not widely available in the UK.

“It looks from those parts of the description of what was proposed that this was… deliberately set up to fail,” said Mr Millett.

“I think that is the weakest option of a compliant system… I’m not sure whether that would be a typical build-up but certainly a potential build-up,” Mr Pargeter replied.

When questioned further by Sir Martin Moore-Bick, chair of the inquiry, Mr Pargeter admitted that Kingspan’s motivation for carrying out these tests was “not entirely altruistic”.

These test results were then sent to the HCLG Committee as part of a 96-page submission to Dame Judith’s Independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety. At no point in the document did Kingspan mention that the tests had been designed to achieve the worst performance possible.

Kingspan also sent the test results to senior civil servant Brian Martin.

“We erred on the safe side and so the ACMs had their edges folded over to protect the core of the panels from fire,” John Garbutt, divisional marketing director at Kingspan, wrote in an accompanying email.

During this exchange, we saw Mr Martin ask Kingspan if it had some leftover testing material that it could share with the government to use in its own tests.

“We do. But it might cost a meeting with a minister,” Mr Garbutt replied.

When asked whether Kingspan had met with a minister following this email, Mr Pargeter said he could “not recall”.

Following questioning, Mr Pargeter said he may have met a minister at a dinner he attended at the Houses of Parliament in January 2018.

Mr Millett referred to this as “the Kevin Hollinrake dinner”.

“The impression one gets from this email run is that Kingspan is… cosying up to a senior civil servant in the MHCLG with a view to using him as a stepping stone to access power at the very highest level,” Mr Millett said.

Mr Parteger replied: “I think that would be an overstatement… I think John was just being a bit sarcastic.”

Update on 25.3.2021 at 4.30pm:

Following Kingspan disputing some of the questions put to Mr Pargeter he returned in March 2021 to give additional evidence. You can read a report of that session here.

“We’re going to have to close the hearings for the time being”

On Wednesday afternoon, the inquiry began hearing from Richard Burnley, former managing director at Kingspan.

Mr Burnley was giving his perspective on some of the evidence that we have already heard, when the hearing was interrupted by Sir Martin, who informed the attendees that a member of the inquiry team had tested positive for COVID-19.

“We’ve considered very carefully whether there is any way in which we could carry on on some revised basis, but I'm afraid we’ve come to the conclusion that that simply is not possible. So, regrettably at this point we’re going to have to close the hearings for the time being,” he said.

The inquiry has now been postponed until 11 January, when we will resume hearing from Mr Burnley.

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