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Grenfell Tower Inquiry diary week 45: ‘Don’t you find all this rather a surprising debate, given that the Equality Act was passed in 2010?’

Insight30.07.2112.30 PM by Peter Apps

The inquiry heard from expert witness Colin Todd this week, who gave his views about the work of risk assessor Carl Stokes as well as answered questions about his own guidance. Peter Apps and Nathaniel Barker report

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The inquiry heard from expert witness Colin Todd this week, who gave his views about the work of risk assessor Carl Stokes as well as answered questions about his own guidance. Peter Apps and Nathaniel Barker report #UKhousing

Colin Todd plays an interesting role at this inquiry.

Officially, his job is to act as an expert witness – an independent judge of what could reasonably have been expected of the tower’s fire risk assessor Carl Stokes.

But he is also an active player in the story, having led the work to write a key fire safety guidance – particularly a document aimed specifically at purpose-built blocks of flats in 2011.

So, his witness evidence mixed his independent view of the role of Mr Stokes with questions about whether his own guidance was sufficient.

We will start our recap with the issue of evacuation.

‘So does that tell us that people thought that stay put meant you didn’t have to think about evacuating disabled people?’

Colin Todd gave evidence to the inquiry this week (picture: Grenfell Tower Inquiry)

The inquiry has already heard that no personal emergency evacuation plans (PEEPs) were prepared for the many disabled residents in Grenfell Tower.

Many of them became trapped during the blaze. The inquiry has heard that 41% of the disabled residents present in the tower on the night of the fire died, a higher proportion than any other group.

Mr Todd is at the centre of a storm of controversy about this. His consultancy prepared guidance for the Local Government Association (LGA) in 2011 (endorsed by the government), which witnesses from Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) have said they followed in relation to the issue of PEEPs.

This guide advised managers of blocks of flats that it was “usually unrealistic” to write evacuation plans for residents with disabilities.

During his evidence, we heard that a very strong warning was issued in 2011, not long after the guide was published. A consultant wrote to the LGA to tell the organisation that the advice could result in “an unnecessary tragedy” and “reflects an outdated viewpoint which is highly discriminative and not in line with UK legislation”.

This letter was forwarded to government officials and Mr Todd for a response. They replied to say that it was not “reasonable and practical” to recommend evacuation plans for disabled people “by way of default in all blocks of flats”.

Mr Todd stood by these views when he gave evidence this week.

He was read passages from the relevant legislation – the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 – which requires that “in the event of danger, it must be possible for persons to evacuate the premises as quickly and as safely as possible”.

Asked if this implied a need to ensure escape was possible without the assistance of firefighters, Mr Todd said: “Other than for disabled people in blocks of flats.”

Mr Todd said this approach was justified because the legislation included the cavaet “where necessary” and in a general needs block with no staff it would not be “practicable” to arrange for evacuation of those with mobility issues.

He called the Grenfell Tower fire “a dreadful, dreadful, obscene anomaly”, but claimed disabled residents were generally most at risk from fire within their own flats – meaning evacuation was not the most important consideration in their safety.

“So does that tell us that people thought that stay put meant that you didn’t have to think about evacuating disabled people?” asked counsel to the inquiry Richard Millett QC.

“Some would take a different view from what I’m about to say, sir, but I would say that the majority view was exactly that,” replied Mr Todd.

This position was complicated by contradictory advice in another document – PAS 79 – for which Mr Todd was the “technical author”.

This guide, prepared for the British Standards Institution, offered a model methodology for risk assessors and was first published in 2005, with updates in 2007 and 2012. It did explicitly recommend that arrangements for evacuation of disabled occupants be considered.

When asked about the contradiction, Mr Todd said PAS 79 was written with commercial, not residential, buildings in mind. But nowhere in the guidance was this made clear.

“Is it right that the fire risk assessment trade regarded it as appropriate to take a different approach to disabled people in high-rise residential buildings from the approach they would take in an office block?” asked Mr Millett.

“That would have been the majority opinion, sir, yes, although people will, with the benefit of the lens of hindsight, argue about that now,” replied Mr Todd.

“Is there anything in the legislation or the guidance which would justify that majority opinion?” asked Mr Millett.

“I’m not sure that I can point to anything. It’s a matter of reasonable practicability, sir,” replied Mr Todd.

“Sitting there today, don’t you find all this rather a surprising debate, given that, for example, the Equality Act was passed in 2010?” asked Mr Millett.

Mr Todd said he did not find it “terribly surprising” because if the flats were built correctly, stay put can be “extremely favourable to disabled people”.

The Home Office has recommissioned Mr Todd’s consultancy to prepare new post-Grenfell guidance.

‘Was that persistent failure over those years consistent with your expectations of what a reasonably competent fire risk assessor should or would have done?’

Richard Millett QC, lead counsel to the inquiry (picture: Grenfell Tower Inquiry)

So what of Mr Stokes’ work on this point? But he did consider the issue of disability in his risk assessments and gave it a specific section in all four assessments he carried out on the tower between 2012 and 2016.

Mr Todd recorded this as a “positive finding” in his report, noting that: “There is consideration of disabled people.”

But what Mr Stokes actually wrote in his assessments left something to be desired. In each report, he cut and pasted the same statement with only very minor alterations.

This said there was no evidence of any residents with an impairment which would prevent them hearing a shouted warning of fire.

He added that KCTMO was planning to gather further information and this would be used in the preparation of PEEPs if necessary. But he never, across four years, chased up this information from KCTMO.

“Was that persistent failure over those years consistent with your expectations of what a reasonably competent fire risk assessor should or would have done?” asked Mr Millett.

Mr Todd said he would have expected the risk assessor to ask about arrangements for disabled residents and for the building owner to “have some high-level generic information, but no greater detail than that”.

‘Did anybody ever ask themselves what the basis of excluding the external wall from the scope of the [assessment] actually was?’

An email from Colin Todd from December 2016 which was released by the inquiry this week (picture: Grenfell Tower Inquiry)

Mr Stokes’ risk assessments did not make any detailed assessment of the building’s external cladding system which, as we now know, turned out to be the primary cause of the rapid fire spread.

He did however write – in an assessment completed in 2016 as the refurbishment came to an end – that the materials used in the system were “fire-rated” and later told KCTMO when asked directly that the cladding complied with building regulations.

This was said despite his lack of knowledge of cladding, or any understanding of the type of materials used. But Mr Todd would not criticise the advice Mr Stokes gave on this point.

He said the cladding had “supposedly been installed under the watchful eye” of building control and “if they’d done their job properly as Mr Stokes assumed, then there wouldn’t have been a problem”.

“He’s absolutely gone far enough, sir, in my opinion,” Mr Todd insisted.

His belief was that consideration of the external wall was not required in a fire risk assessment. He said this view was held “very close to universally” in the profession.

But Mr Millett queried this, pointing out that while the legislation excluded domestic premises, there was nothing to say external walls should be excluded.

“What I’m getting from you is that people assumed… that the external wall was outside the scope of the [legislation] without really thinking about it?” said Mr Millett.

“That may be a little unfair to some colleagues in the profession, but I think it’s probably a reasonable assertion,” replied Mr Todd.

The inquiry was also shown an email from December 2016, when a senior member of the London Fire Brigade (LFB) asked Mr Todd if he had any guidance for assessors who did want to consider cladding – due to some concerns in the fire service about cladding.

Mr Todd responded, saying that he had spoken with Brian Martin, a senior civil servant within the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), and they “come up with a proposal” to require checks for buildings taller than 18 metres “where there is good reason to suspect that external cladding could readily support external fire spread”.

But such a change was not made before the fire.

The email – which had not previously been released – is the latest in a string of evidence that show warnings about cladding fires reached central government before the tragedy in June 2017.

Mr Martin will face extensive questioning when the inquiry turns to central government in the autumn. In his evidence, Mr Todd described Mr Martin as a “personal friend”.

‘I might not want to buy a second-hand car from him, but he might be perfectly competent at fixing the car’

Carl Stokes gave evidence to the inquiry in May (picture: Grenfell Tower Inquiry)

Another major question in the inquiry has been whether Mr Stokes was an appropriate candidate to carry out risk assessments of KCTMO’s buildings and whether he presented his qualifications accurately.

Mr Stokes had worked for the fire service for two decades, which included a period of auditing risk assessments completed by others.

He then retired from the fire service, before completing a short training course and setting himself up as a risk assessor. Mr Todd delivered the training course.

Mr Todd’s view was that Mr Stokes’ qualifications were “suitable for the purpose of carrying out [risk assessments] for Grenfell Tower”.

It is important to emphasise here that there are no statutory competency requirements for fire risk assessors at all.

Mr Todd himself had drafted guidelines on what should be expected, but they were never made mandatory.

This, Mr Todd said, was a deliberate choice of government to reduce “burdens on business”.

“The government were very clear that to have required fire risk assessors to be competent, it would imply to the business community that they’d have to go out and buy in the services of a specialist,” he said. “And the Fire Safety Order was brought in in the name of reducing burdens on business.”

But what of how Mr Stokes presented his qualifications? The inquiry previously heard that he included a series of ‘post-nominals’ on his CV which related to qualifications he did not hold or did not exist.

Mr Stokes has said he did not know how post-nominals should be used and that he was simply trying to reflect training courses he had attended.

But Mr Todd was critical of this, saying his impression was that Mr Stokes was trying to “big himself up” and that this had the potential to mislead clients.

However, he said that there was “no need for him to do this” as his actual qualifications were perfectly adequate.

“I might not want to buy a second-hand car from him, but he might be perfectly competent at fixing the car, if I could use that analogy,” said Mr Todd.

‘Would you seriously describe as meticulous the work of a fire risk assessor who… pasted text into an [assessment] where it was completely inapposite?’

In general, Mr Todd called Mr Stokes’ work assessing the tower “quite meticulous”.

This was despite mistakes in his assessments which arose from cutting and pasting between documents.

For example, he said pigeon netting on balconies at Grenfell Tower did not present a risk. The tower had neither pigeon netting or balconies.

In his report, Mr Todd said this practice gave him only “slight concern”.

“Would you seriously describe as meticulous the work of a fire risk assessor who cut text from an [assessment] for building A and pasted that into an [assessment] for building B where it was completely inapposite?” asked Mr Millett.

“He went into incredible detail, but you would then have to sort out which of that detail was something of a cut and paste and which was specific and unique to the building,” said Mr Todd.

Mr Millett pressed him on this answer, pointing out that the failure indicated Mr Stokes “did not bother to read his own work before signing it off”. “Why is that something that only gives you slight concern? It’s quite a serious problem, isn’t it?” he asked.

Mr Todd accepted he may need to delete the word “slight”.

Lawyers acting for the bereaved have argued against Mr Todd’s evaluation of Mr Stokes’ work, with one saying aspects of his report “create the impression [he] is at pains to exonerate Stokes”.

Mr Todd did, however, criticise Mr Stokes’ work related to the smoke ventilation system at Grenfell Tower.

This crucial system which removes smoke from communal areas was known to be “beyond economic repair” for six years between 2010 and 2016.

Mr Stokes’ failed to raise concerns about the lack of information he was given regarding the operation and maintenance of the system

Mr Todd said that, as a result, Mr Stokes should have concluded the risk at Grenfell Tower to be “moderate” rather than “tolerable” and failing to do so “fell below acceptable standards”.

‘Are you aware of this reoccurring fault?’

Abigail Acosta led the programme to replace fire doors in Kensington and Chelsea (picture: Grenfell Tower Inquiry)

Earlier in the week, the inquiry heard from Abigail Acosta, a project manager who oversaw the replacement of fire doors in blocks of flats across KCTMO’s stock in the early 2010s.

This programme is significant because the doors fitted were not up to standard. They did not have the requisite smoke leakage certification, did not meet the 30-minute fire-resistance standard they were advertised as possessing and had a critical flaw with the self-closing device.

The doors were procured via the London Housing Consortium (LHC) procurement network, a list of approved contractors and suppliers for social landlords in London. They were Manse Masterdor products, which are widely used in the sector.

Ms Acosta accepted that KCTMO received no actual fire-testing information when it purchased the doors, just a brochure and a series of product certificates from Masterdor.

“Do you accept that, absent those fire test certificates, the TMO could not be certain that the doors had been tested to the relevant regulatory standards?” asked counsel to the inquiry Andrew Kinnier QC.

“Yes,” replied Ms Acosta.

A sample of the doors were inspected on installation by a representative of the LHC, who reported that the “door supplied was of a good quality and professionally installed”.

But these checks only viewed just over 10% of the doors installed. “At the time, were you satisfied that inspecting 137 out of nearly 1,200 was acceptable for your purposes?” asked Mr Kinnier.

“Yes, at the time, yes,” replied Ms Acosta.

A major issue that the inquiry has uncovered is faulty self-closers. Evidence from Grenfell Tower residents and a former caretaker suggested that the closing device was prone to jamming or falling out.

This was believed to be due to the use of screws which were too small and, in some instances, broken closers on the new doors were disconnected by KCTMO staff and not replaced.

There were a large number of missing or defective self-closers in Grenfell Tower, which is believed to have been a major contributing factor to the rapid spread of smoke through communal areas on the night of the fire.

The inquiry saw an email from Mr Stokes to Ms Acosta in July 2011 which read: “On Tuesday I was at Lancaster West [the estate where Grenfell Tower is located] and was informed that the self-closing device on three of the new flat entrance doors have come away from the door, this is the same problem as in King Charles House [another block]. Are you aware of this reoccurring fault?”

Ms Acosta said she raised this with Manse Masterdor, which did replace the screws on some doors, but only those where a fault had been identified, not throughout the stock.

‘I’m very confused as to what was actually thought to be required’

Beryl Menzies gave expert evidence on the issue of smoke control (picture: Grenfell Tower Inquiry)

The week’s proceedings were rounded off with three-and-a-half hours of evidence from expert witness Beryl Menzies, an experienced building engineer specialising in fire safety.

Ms Menzies was principally asked technical questions about a report she produced for the inquiry which scrutinised the work of Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s (RBKC) building control department regarding the smoke control system installed in the tower.

Remember that RBKC had previously admitted multiple failings by building control in signing off the refurbishment.

The smoke control system at Grenfell Towe was altered using a bespoke design during the refurbishment, having been in a sorry state before that point.

The inquiry heard that it leaked smoke onto multiple floors on the night of the fire.

It did not comply with building regulations, but those involved in its design have argued that would have been impossible given the nature of the building so they tried to do the best they could.

The aim was to achieve a performance of smoke being sucked out of lobbies at two metres per second and this is what was promised to building control.

Ms Menzies felt that this performance-based design for the system “was acceptable in principle”. However, she concluded that building control ended up wrongly accepting the system’s compliance based only on a rather basic check carried out by a third party in April 2016.

She could find no evidence that building control officers ever “confirmed or witnessed the physical path of the air (smoke) movements away from the stair and that there was no significant inflow from other leakage paths such as the fire flat”.

That failure, she told the inquiry, fell below the standard of a reasonably competent building control body.

The Grenfell Tower Inquiry will now break for five weeks and will resume with the evidence from expert Dr Barbara Lane, the final witness for this phase, in September.

Grenfell Tower Inquiry headlines: week 45

Warning government-endorsed fire safety guide could lead to tragedy issued in 2011

The Local Government Association was warned a decade ago that fire safety guidance it had published could lead to an “unnecessary tragedy” because of its failure to recommend evacuation plans for disabled residents, the Grenfell Tower Inquiry heard.

Industry did not believe legal obligations for evacuation applied to disabled people in blocks of flats, expert tells inquiry

Legal obligations to make provision for safe evacuation of residents were understood by the industry not to apply to disabled people in blocks of flats, an expert witness has told the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.

Government set no standards for competence of risk assessors to reduce ‘burdens on business’

The government declined to set standards for the competence of fire risk assessors because of its focus on “deregulation” and reducing “burdens on business”, an expert witness has told the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.

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