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Grenfell Tower Inquiry diary week 59: ‘Recent tests have apparently shown it continued to burn for 20 minutes after a flame was taken away’

Insight10.12.212.00 PM by Peter Apps

After shocking opening statements, the Grenfell Tower Inquiry turned its attention to the work of Local Authority Building Control (LABC). Peter Apps reports

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After shocking opening statements, the Grenfell Tower Inquiry turned its attention to the work of Local Authority Building Control. Peter Apps reports #UKhousing

This week began with shocking opening statements from lawyers for the bereaved and survivors, who branded the Grenfell Tower fire “one of the major scandals of our time” and accused the government of a “prolonged period of concealment” concerning the risks of dangerous cladding.

We have already summarised what they said here and reported on the partial apology issued by the government’s lawyer here.

We will now turn to the evidence that also began this week, mostly concerning a body called Local Authority Building Control (LABC) and a series of certificates it provided for Kingspan’s K15 insulation. Not for the first time, it is necessary to begin with some explanation.

What is the significance of the LABC certificate?

LABC is a membership organisation for building control inspectors at local councils. This means its views are important and influential in persuading inspectors to accept certain construction products as compliant.

The organisation monetised this influence by selling certificates to product manufacturers. These assured building control inspectors that the product was suitable.

LABC provided certificates for both types of insulation used on Grenfell: Celotex RS5000 and Kingspan K15. Both were combustible and neither should have been used on a high-rise outside of a system that had passed a large-scale test.

This week we have been hearing about the certificate for Kingspan’s K15, first issued in 2009, with a further ‘registered detail’ document published in 2014.

As the inquiry has already heard, this certificate said the insulation “can be considered a material of limited combustibility” and was therefore “suitable for use” on high-rise buildings.

These statements were wrong and both Kingspan and LABC witnesses have accepted they were misleading.

We have already heard from David Jones (pictured above), the inspector who wrote the certificate. He says he was “misled” by Kingspan and “pressured” by LABC into producing it.

We have also seen Kingspan emails, where employees wrote: “We can be very convincing when we need to be, we threw every bit of fire test data we could at him, we probably blocked his server.

“In the end I think LABC convinced themselves [K15] is the best thing since sliced bread. We didn’t even have to get any real ale down him!”

This week we looked into the internal processes at LABC that allowed the certificate to be published and never corrected.

‘It’s a pretty major [error] to describe it as a material that can be considered a material of limited combustibility when there is absolutely no test evidence to support that’

After the certificate was drafted by a council inspector in Herefordshire, it should have undergone a process of peer review. LABC’s process was to consult 12 reviewers. Once four approved it, the document went through.

The K15 certificate was sent out to a group of reviewers on 3 March 2009. Two reviewers responded, questioning: “Why is an insulation board a system?”

This was a pertinent question. The testing showed Kingspan had only approved its product for use on high-rises as part of one specific cladding system, but the LABC certificate was effectively clearing it for general use in all systems.

“They’re raising that very clearly, aren’t they?” asked Kate Grange QC.

Barry Turner, former director of technical policy at LABC, said he believed the question was in relation to the product’s thermal performance as opposed to fire safety.

It does not appear anyone responded to the reviewer’s concerns. In April, another LABC staff member asked when the certificate would be published, noting “pressure from Kingspan”.

The certificate was ultimately issued, unamended, with the erroneous description still included.

Asked about a similar review process for the 2013 certificate, the week’s second witness, David Ewing (pictured above), head of education at LABC, was asked: “Can we agree that it’s concerning that those involved in this peer-review process were not able to identify the technically incorrect information provided?”

“I think you can, yes,” he said.

“It’s a pretty major [error] to describe it as a material that can be considered a material of limited combustibility when there is absolutely no test evidence to support that; can we agree that?” asked Ms Grange.

“Yes,” he replied.

‘Did you appreciate the public safety ramifications of being so dismissive to Rockwool’s concerns?’

Not long after the certificate was published, LABC received a warning that it might not be accurate.

In September 2009, Rockwool, a rival of Kingspan that produces mineral-wool insulation, wrote to Mr Turner to query the claims Kingspan was making about the certificate.

The letter called the claims “of serious concern” and spelled out why K15 was not of limited combustibility or suitable for high-rises in most circumstances.

The letter was cc-ed to Brian Martin, a senior government official responsible for building guidance.

What was Mr Turner’s (pictured above) response? “From recollection, I didn’t consider them [the complaints]. My recollection is that this was considered a complaint from a competitor, and LABC shouldn’t act as referee between competitors.

“I put my trust in those that had dealt with the matter and the certifications that were in place by [other organisations], rather than believe an argument put forward by a competitor.”

He said the fact that Mr Martin “was copied in and [had] not responded diminished the strength of the letter”.

Rockwool wrote again a month later, chasing a response and adding that the claims were “extremely important with respect to both life safety and property protection”.

LABC still did not respond. Rockwool continued to chase, with an email in February 2010.

We then saw that Mr Turner emailed Kingspan’s head of marketing to discuss it – someone he said he knew “very well”.

Mr Turner said he would “look at the issue more closely” and asked Kingspan “not to circulate the original Rockwool letter”.

“Can you explain why you were discussing this with the head of marketing at Kingspan before you’ve even investigated the substance of the complaint?” asked Ms Grange.

“I think the first connection or the first correspondence came from them [Kingspan], not from me,” replied Mr Turner.

He eventually replied to Rockwool on 23 February 2010, writing that “the local authority, that carried out the assessment… were satisfied that it met the relevant criteria”, adding “it is not for us to explain to third parties our reasons or justifications”.

“Did you appreciate the public safety ramifications of being so dismissive to Rockwool’s concerns?” asked Ms Grange.

“If I had appreciated that I wouldn’t have dealt with it in the way that I did,” said Mr Turner.

‘Did that sponsorship involvement with Kingspan impact on the LABC’s decision to investigate the concerns?’

At around the same time, LABC had several other business dealings with Kingspan.

First, it was relying on the manufacturer for advice about industry guidance it was producing for its members. In one instance it even allowed the firm to include its logo on the guidance document.

This prompted a complaint from another organisation, which wrote in February 2009: “Surely LABC have to be neutral and be seen to be neutral… This kind of sponsorship is not something we’ve ever seen before.”

The email suggested using trade body groups for advice rather than a single manufacturer. Mr Turner did not respond until December, when he promised to “take your concerns into account”.

But further documents showed LABC continued to liaise with Kingspan directly about its guidance.

The firm also sought a commercial sponsorship deal from Kingspan, where the firm would pay £12,500 to sponsor its awards. LABC promised it would receive “direct outreach” to 4,000 surveyors and 3,000 special customers, which would “provide an indirect route to sales through referrals”.

“Were you ever involved in any discussion about whether such business sponsorship packages risked prejudicing LABC’s independence from manufacturers?” asked Ms Grange (pictured above).

“It was a difficult line for us to follow… because we had a need for income to be able to promote local authority building control in a competitive market,” said Mr Taylor.

“Did that sponsorship involvement with Kingspan impact on the LABC’s decision to investigate the concerns which had been raised by third parties about the K15 certificates?” asked Ms Grange.

“No, because I didn’t tie the two together. I was not involved in this discussion or this sponsorship discussion,” said Mr Turner.

‘Recent fire tests have apparently shown it continued to burn for 20 minutes after a flame was taken away’

The warnings from Rockwool were not the only ones LABC received suggesting that its certificate for K15 was misleading.

In 2013, the firm provided Kingspan with a series of ‘registered detail’ certificates for their products, including one for K15. This repeated the misleading claims from the 2009 certificate.

It also included an appendix which re-emphasised the suitability of the insulation for high-rises and included two diagrams showing its potential use.

This appendix and the diagram were copied and pasted directly from an email sent by Kingspan. The diagrams showed systems in which the product had never been tested successfully.

Around this time – as the inquiry heard previously – the National House Building Council (NHBC), a large private building-control body, was raising concerns separately with Kingspan about the suitability of its insulation for high-rises.

The NHBC emailed LABC to warn it about the concerns.

In October 2014, Mr Ewing emailed Mr Turner to say the NHBC was concerned “K15 has been used outside the scope of installation” and “recent fire tests have apparently shown it continued to burn for 20 minutes after a flame was taken away”.

Mr Turner responded by saying he would join a call with NHBC about the issue, but was “not going to say or admit to anything at this stage”.

“Do you recall that discussion you had [with the NHBC]?” asked Ms Grange.

“I don’t recall that conversation or whether it took place,” said Mr Turner.

Another LABC colleague emailed in December 2014, referring to a meeting where the “sales director of Kingspan was very bullish”, but wrote there was “no likelihood of Kingspan coming up with tests that prove it works in high-risk constructions”.

“Did you think, at that point, about issuing a warning to your members to say, well, there’s a problem here, we’ve been issuing certificates for many years now for the K15 product and those certificates have inaccurate information on them?” asked Ms Grange.

“I left it to the others that were dealing with the matter… to follow that up,” said Mr Turner.

The inquiry saw that he ultimately suggested amending the K15 certificate so that it continued to say the product was suitable “for use in rainscreen [cladding] applications above 18 metres in height”, but merely added the words “however, see scope and conditions of certificate for more information”.

“You see the problem with that statement, that you’re suggesting that it’s inferring global approval for use of K15 in rainscreen applications over 18 metres in height, whereas it should have said the K15 complies… only when used in one specific system configuration,” said Ms Grange.

“With hindsight and with legal appraisal of it, I would not disagree,” said Mr Turner. “That was my wording. If my wording was not correct, and you challenge that now, I would accept that. But it was not done with legal implications in mind.”

He went on to assure others within the business that the issue was “an insurance issue, not one of regulatory compliance”. He said he could not recall why he had said this.

When the issue was raised again in January 2015, one of his colleagues, Lorna Stimpson, wrote: “This issue has been burning for a LONG time though, hasn’t it? (Get it !!!!) Why is it raising its head again all of a sudden?”

Ms Stimpson is the current chief executive of LABC. Since the fire, Mr Turner has chaired a policy group which has aimed to review how large-scale testing of cladding systems operate.

‘Identifying possible solutions to allowing polyurethane-type insulation materials to be used in cladding systems over 18m’

One final issue from this week’s evidence is worth noting. In July 2014, an organisation called the Building Control Alliance (BCA) published a technical guidance note which said untested cladding systems could be used so long as they were approved by an accredited laboratory through a desktop study.

We saw this week that both the NHBC and LABC were involved in drafting this document. In one meeting, Steve Evans of the NHBC is recorded as saying the purpose was “identifying possible solutions to allowing polyurethane-type insulation materials to be used in cladding systems over 18m”.

When the guidance was widened in 2015 to permit any competent professional to carry out the assessments, internal Kingspan emails suggested this was “incorporating some of the changes that we had asked for”.

The inquiry was then shown emails exchanged between BCA members 10 days after the Grenfell Tower fire, discussing whether the guidance note should be withdrawn.

Mr Evans said doing so would be “a serious overreaction” and “will not only leave a lot of schemes already under construction in jeopardy but will also cause issues with the completed schemes where builders have used the note to demonstrate compliance”.

In the same email chain, Mr Turner said withdrawing the guidance would “leave BCA with egg on its face” and suggested “a review” before any decision was made about whether to withdraw it.

The inquiry continues, with Mr Ewing continuing next week.

Grenfell Tower Inquiry phase two: weekly diaries

Module one: the refurbishment

Week one: A vivid picture of a broken industry

After a week of damning revelations at the opening of phase two of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, Peter Apps recaps the key points