Senior government official was warned of ‘grave concerns’ about Grenfell-style cladding in 2016

Today’s revelations began with a seven-minute video from a conference held in January 2016, hosted by the Building Research Establishment (BRE) and fire barrier manufacturer Siderise, covering the issue of dangerous facades.

The footage showed Nick Jenkins, a senior figure at cladding firm Euroclad and Booth Muirie, asking a question about the acceptability of ACM under English building guidance Approved Document B.

He said when the material has a polyethylene core “it burns very aggressively”, but that this material still obtained a ‘Class 0’ fire rating which was apparently the standard required by the official guidance.

He said that he was only aware of two projects in the UK that had used a less flammable version of the cladding.

Calling for the product to be banned, he went on to warn that “you could have an exact repeat of the Dubai fire in any number of buildings that we supply product to in London”.

The question prompted the chair to ask the panel if “we are sitting on a time bomb as well in terms of some of the materials that are installed”.

Steve Evans, head of technical operations at NHBC, was one of the panellists, having just given a presentation on the ‘routes to compliance’ for combustible materials on tall buildings.

He was recorded responding to the question about a “time bomb” by saying “you will have to ask our builder customers” to scattered laughs.

He added: “There is an anomaly in the approved documents… so there could be instances where you have this polyethylene-filled panel on buildings over 18 metres.

“We have highlighted this to DCLG [the government department responsible for building regulations] and they are looking at Part B [the regulations covering fire safety] at the moment.”

This contrasted with evidence he gave to the inquiry today where he said he believed the use of polyethylene-cored cladding panels was banned by the wording in Approved Document B which said “filler materials” had to meet the higher fire standard of ‘limited combustibility’.

“When you responded, why didn’t you just tell the audience straight up that as evidenced by the Dubai cladding fires ACM panels with a PE core were dangerous and non compliant and should not be used and should never have been used?” asked Richard Millett QC, lead counsel to the inquiry.

“It is probably a badly worded answer,” Mr Evans said. “I thought I was trying to explain where that the misunderstanding came from although… on reviewing the video it’s a badly worded answer.”

The inquiry then saw that Mr Jenkins had emailed Mr Evans after the conference to continue to raise the point and made an invitation to produce an industry guidance note to clear up any confusion about ACM.

Further emails showed Mr Jenkins taking the concerns to Brian Martin, a senior civil servant then responsible for the Approved Document B guidance, in February 2016.

Mr Jenkins warned that “there is much confusion and misunderstanding” in the industry. “I do think the current situation is of grave concern,” he wrote. “Surely this justifies the requirement for a less ambiguous statement of the rules?”

But Mr Martin responded saying that he was “not sure the text [of Approved Document B] is really that ambiguous” and said “people often argue that it isn’t clear when they are trying to justify doing something that is clearly wrong”.

He added that: “It’s for the designer and building control body to consider if [the regulation] has been met.”

He claimed that the word “filler” had been added “deliberately… to address things that form part of the cladding system”.

However, this was the part of the guidance believed to be ambiguous, as it was contained in a section covering ‘insulation’ and was therefore not widely understood to refer to external cladding panels which have no insulating function.

This has been a topic of major debate since the Grenfell Tower fire, with the government writing to industry just days after the blaze to clarify that “for the avoidance of doubt” the word “filler” referred to the internal core of an ACM panel.

Industry figures have previously accused them of attempting to use this argument to avoid liability for the widespread use of ACM, and today’s evidence marks another clear moment when the department and Mr Martin were clearly warned of the ambiguity surrounding this guidance.

Mr Evans was then grilled about NHBC’s decision to publish guidance in July 2016 which expressly permitted the use of ACM and combustible insulation in cladding systems.