ao link

My Library

Grenfell Tower Inquiry recap: module three – the management and maintenance of the block

Insight02.11.227.00 AM by Peter Apps

As the Grenfell Tower Inquiry prepares to return for closing statements, Peter Apps recaps some of the evidence relating to the parties involved in managing and maintaining the building

Sharelines

As the Grenfell Tower Inquiry prepares to return for closing statements, @PeteApps recaps some of the evidence relating to the parties involved in managing and maintaining the building #UKhousing

Evidence relating to the management and maintenance of Grenfell Tower ran from March 2021 to September 2021. The module primarily examined the actions of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) – the landlord of the tower – and Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO), the council’s arm’s-length management organisation.

Some of the key evidence is recapped below.

Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation

Its role: An arm’s-length management body set up by the council in 1996 to manage the 9,000 council homes in Kensington and Chelsea.

What we learned: This module opened with evidence from former residents of the tower who were highly critical of KCTMO’s management and how it responded to complaints.

One resident described the three-stage complaints process as a “strategy” to “exhaust” complainers. There were severe criticisms of the block’s maintenance: water was sometimes shut off and leaks in the flats, which led to mould, mushrooms sprouting and silverfish infestations.

After a fire in 2010, a leaseholder group led by Shah Ahmed warned that the smoke system was malfunctioning. The group was correct. In fact, it was internally branded “beyond economic repair”.

Despite the complaints, KCTMO took six years to attempt to fix it, despite a deficiency notice being issued a six-week deadline by the London Fire Brigade (LFB) in March 2014.

One internal email sent by Janice Wray (pictured above), then head of health and safety at KCTMO, discussing the delay in 2014 said: “Let us hope our luck holds and there isn’t a fire.”

Residents were also upset by the refurbishment, in particular the plans that were introduced halfway through to put heating interface units next to front doors instead of inside kitchens as previously planned.

A group was set up to protest this decision, but KCTMO refused to acknowledge it, branding it a “showcase” for resident Eddie Daffarn, who had begun a blog with a neighbour about conditions in the tower. Only after the involvement of the local MP did KCTMO meet the group.

There were also serious questions about the fire risk assessment process in place at the organisation. An audit in 2013 revealed “risk control shortcomings that if left unresolved could potentially expose the business and those in H&S [health and safety] management positions to corporate and personal liabilities”.

In 2014, minutes revealed 1,400 actions identified as necessary by fire risk assessments were incomplete. The board appears to have elected not to tell the LFB about this, warning that doing so “would result in more scrutiny from the LFB and also possible enforcement action”.

Like many UK housing providers, KCTMO also did not keep clear records of residents with disabilities who might struggle to evacuate during a fire.

Neither, despite suggesting they would do so in the early 2010s, did it prepare plans for their evacuation. Witnesses told the inquiry this was because of government guidance which suggested doing so was unnecessary.

The Grenfell Tower fire ultimately killed 40% of the tower’s population of residents with disabilities – many of whom were unable to escape the blaze.

There was also specific evidence relating to the lifts and replacement smoke ventilation system, which fell under KCTMO’s remit as manager of the building.

One key exchange: Richard Millett KC, counsel to the inquiry, asked Claire Williams, a project manager at KCTMO: “Did you think at the time that hoping your luck would hold, a sort of fingers-crossed attitude, was really an appropriate way of discharging your health and safety functions?”

“I didn’t think of it in those terms, but I appreciate it is a health and safety issue, which is why both of us were trying to keep it moving forward,” replied Ms Williams.

Key week: Week 32. Read our summary here.

Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea

Its role: RBKC owned Grenfell Tower and was its landlord. It also set the budget for KCTMO and scrutinised its work.

What we learned: A key area of failure for both RBKC and KCTMO was the maintenance of fire doors. It is crucial that fire doors in multi-occupancy buildings self close, to ensure smoke does not spread through the building during a fire.

Grenfell Tower had an enormous problem with broken self-closers. One post-fire estimate suggested that 64% of them were either broken or missing across the 129 flats.

It emerged during the inquiry that this problem was well known in west London. Multiple residents complained about broken self-closers to KCTMO.

In fact, a caretaker, since deceased, admitted to disconnecting devices which he said were defective. This is something he told KCTMO management about. It told him to stop, but did not check to fix the ones he had already disconnected.

In October 2015, the LFB served a deficiency notice on another block in the borough, Adair Tower, noting that its self-closers were missing.

Less than three weeks later, the block suffered a fire, which involved serious smoke spread and a full evacuation.

Following this, the LFB told the council to institute a borough-wide programme to install self-closers and check whether they are working. But internal KCTMO documents showed the council’s director of housing “said no” to this work. “RBKC do not want to do the work if not required,” said minutes from February 2016.

The cost was seen as restrictive, and RBKC did not believe other boroughs were doing regular inspections.

But the LFB kept pushing and in November 2016, it inspected Grenfell Tower and issued a deficiency notice that said the tower had been “compromised by the fitting of doors which do not self close”. They should have been fixed by May 2017 – a month before the fire.

The failure to fit self-closers was also raised by the scrutiny committee inside the council that oversaw its housing services. But when it raised the issue in March 2017, Laura Johnson, former head of housing at RBKC, was dismissive and called it “a non-issue”.

“We’ve been through this before and I refuse to open this up again,” she wrote in an email to KCTMO chief executive Robert Black.

The council’s scrutiny committee had also been asked to investigate the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower, following complaints from residents.

But internal emails show its chair, Quentin Marshall, calling the refurbishment “a £100k gift from the state” and that the complaints were “grossly exaggerated” and “should be taken with a large pinch of salt”. He assured a councillor that members of the committee would be “pre-briefed to understand how to play it” before the complaints were considered.

Emails also showed Ms Johnson asking KCTMO to “do a bit of checking” on Mr Daffarn’s tenancy background after he raised complaints.

The inquiry also heard from former cabinet member for housing, Rock Feilding-Mellen (pictured above), who was shown to have intervened in the decision to clad the tower to argue over colour choices such as “champagne” and “British racing green”.

He did not read a document sent to councillors by the LFB after the Lakanal House fire aimed at preventing a repeat.

One key exchange: Asked if he had read the LFB guide when the Grenfell Tower refurbishment was happening, Mr Feilding-Mellen said: “No. I failed to do that, and based on what I know has happened, I regret having failed to do that.

“I at the time was conscious that there were many layers of people with what I thought was the relevant expertise and indeed the role to check the health and safety generally, including fire safety aspects, of a refurbishment project like this.”

He was then shown a passage of the guidance which specifically advised “not to make assumptions” that fire safety was being properly dealt with.

“On what you have told us this morning, Mr Feilding-Mellen, you were making exactly the assumption that this document advised you should not make,” said Mr Millett.

“That appears to be the case,” Mr Feilding-Mellen replied.

Key week: Week 35. Read our summary here.

CS Stokes and Associates

Its role: Carl Stokes (pictured above), the only employee and director of CS Stokes and Associates Ltd, was the fire risk assessor of Grenfell Tower.

What we learned: Mr Stokes, a retired firefighter who had audited the risk assessments of others but never carried out one of his own, first came into contact with KCTMO as a consultant employed by Salvus in 2010.

Salvus had been engaged after KCTMO was criticised by LFB for relying on its own unqualified staff to conduct risk assessments.

But KCTMO was unhappy with Salvus, calling it “very rule bound” and “reluctant to challenge the LFB” in internal emails.

Instead, it appointed Mr Stokes to carry out risk assessments as a sole-trader. He was said to be more “competitively priced”.

While Mr Stokes presented a CV which appeared to list an impressive array of qualifications through a series of post-nominals, many of these were either invented or irrelevant. His training amounted to a few short courses.

He risk assessed Grenfell Tower five times between 2010 and the fire, but missed major issues, such as the missing fire door self-closers and misidentified the building’s lift as ‘firefighting’ when it was not.

He also admitted under questioning that he copy and pasted between assessments – complimenting the standard of the balconies and pigeon netting at Grenfell Tower, which had neither.

With regard to residents with disabilities, Mr Stokes repeatedly said there was “no evidence” of any residents at Grenfell who would not be able to hear a shouted warning of fire. This narrow view of disability ignored the presence of many residents with mobility issues, despite Mr Stokes commenting elsewhere on mobility scooters being left in communal areas.

In fact, at one stage the LFB asked if there were any residents with disabilities in KCTMO’s high-rise stock, as it was planning a pilot of mobile sprinklers.

Mr Stokes advised the organisation to “say you have nobody” to avoid raising questions about “why they were not included in the building’s [fire risk assessment]”.

He denied when asked that he was encouraging KCTMO to lie.

He also assured them that the cladding used in the refurbishment was “non-combustible” and “compliant” with building regulations, following concerns raised by the LFB following a fire in Shepherd’s Bush, west London.

Mr Stokes accepted under questioning that he did not have the technical expertise to give such advice.

One key exchange: Asked if he had checked his records before offering the reassurance about the cladding, Mr Stokes said: “I’d never had any information on the cladding at Grenfell anyway, so I had no records to check.”

“In giving that advice, weren’t you acting beyond your knowledge and expertise and you ought not to have expressed yourself in such unqualified terms?” asked Andrew Kinnier KC, counsel to the inquiry.

In his answer, Mr Stokes focused on the fact that the products at the building in Shepherd’s Bush were panels below windows, not a full cladding system.

“Shepherd’s Bush didn’t have external cladding on, so therefore the TMO at Grenfell Tower or any other TMO block didn’t have any external cladding of the same nature as Shepherd’s Bush,” he said.

Key week: Week 36. Read our summary here.

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