‘Systematic dishonesty’ by product manufacturers ‘very significant reason’ for Grenfell’s deadly cladding, inquiry concludes

The section on the manufacturers also contained heavy criticism of various bodies that certified their products, such as the British Board of Agrément (BBA), a significant player in the construction industry.

It said the “dishonest” strategies of the corporates succeeded “in a large measure due to the incompetence of the BBA… and an ingrained willingness to accommodate customers instead of insisting on high standards”, which had allowed it to become “the victim of dishonest behaviour on the part of unscrupulous manufacturers”. 

It also criticised the Building Research Establishment (BRE), the former national building science centre for the British government until it was privatised in 1997, as having “sacrificed rigorous application of principle to its commercial interests”.

“Much of the work carried out by the BRE was marred by unprofessional conduct, inadequate practices, a lack of effective oversight, poor reporting and a lack of scientific rigour,” it said.

The report said Arconic – a huge multinational firm headquartered in the US, but operating in Europe out of an office in Merxheim, France – had “sought to exploit what it perceived to be a weak regulatory regime in the UK, while withholding from the market relevant information about the product’s fire performance”.

The inquiry had previously heard that Arconic ran tests on the Reynobond PE 55 product in 2005, which revealed a devastating fire performance when bent into a “cassette” shape that was to be hung on a building using rails, rather than bolted on.

But it never released this information to the market and instead obtained a certificate from the BBA which implied it met relevant standards in UK guidance in both riveted and cassette configurations, without telling the BBA about the test on the cassette-shaped product.

The inquiry said that Claude Wehrle, Arconic’s technical manager who declined to give evidence, had “deliberately and dishonestly” misled the BBA on this point.

Touching on an instance where a manager at Arconic attended a conference in Oslo, in which he heard important warnings about the performance of the polyethylene-cored cladding in fire, and then summarised this for his seniors, the report said it was “clear” that “by late 2007” Arconic was “aware that there was serious concern” about the safety of the product it sold. 

But rather than withdraw it from sale, it “sought to exploit what it perceived to be a weak regulatory regime in the UK” while “withholding” information about the true fire performance.

The report added that “Arconic itself must take responsibility for the use of Reynobond PE 55 on Grenfell Tower” because it knew the sale had been achieved with the help of the BBA certificate, which “it was well aware gave a misleading impression” about the fire performance of the product.

The report also criticised Deborah French, Arconic’s UK sales manager, who was told in February 2014 that the European classification in the BBA document should not be relied on, but continued to use the certificate to win sales, including Grenfell Tower, just two months later.

The report said she was “clearly at fault” and had “wittingly or unwittingly” supported the firm’s “sustained and deliberate strategy” to continue selling Reynobond PE 55 in the UK based on claims she “knew to be false”.

On Kingspan, it said the story of its development and marketing of the K15 insulation product for use on high-rise buildings was one of “deeply entrenched and persistent dishonesty… in pursuit of commercial gain”.

It said that while its product may only have been partially used on Grenfell Tower, the effect of its behaviour had been to “create a spurious market for a [combustible plastic] insulation product suitable for use on high-rise buildings generally” which drew Celotex in as a competitor.

The firm passed a large-scale test on a system containing its product in 2005. It knew this only ever allowed the entire system tested to be used on high rises, but instead marketed its product as suitable for use on high rises in all circumstances. It obtained certificates from the BBA and Local Authority Building Control (LABC) – another private body which purported to represent building control inspectors – to support this “misleading” conclusion. 

The report said its strategy was “to go after every job” and that its “false claims” about its product were “not being made in error by rogue junior employees, but with the knowing approval of a senior manager”. 

Referring to emails in which Philip Heath, then a technical manager at the firm, said those questioning the suitability of the product could “go fuck themselves”, the report said they “expose a casual disregard for public safety at a senior level” and “a keen awareness that it needed to find a way out of the situation it had created through its own mendacity”.

Celotex sought to catch up with Kingspan’s dominance of the high-rise market in the early 2010s, and embarked on a system of testing to try and replicate its strategy.

When an initial test failed, it reinforced the test rig with fire resisting boards, which it never declared in its marketing and which were not referred to in the official test report. The report said this amounted to “rigging” the test and marketing it “in a dishonest way”.

This test was carried out at the BRE’s facility, but Phil Clark, its burn hall manager, had insisted under cross-examination that he knew nothing of Celotex’s plan.

This was rejected by today’s report, which found that he would have known how the test was being manipulated, and said that having carefully considered the evidence, Celotex could “have acted as it did only with the knowledge of Mr Clark”.

It also raised the possibility that he had destroyed crucial evidence: the delivery note of the fire resisting boards. The report said it was “too much of a coincidence” to say that it had been lost and that it “could have been removed or destroyed deliberately” and that “no one at BRE other than Mr Clark was involved in the Celotex tests in a way that would provide a motive for doing that”.

It concluded that he “did not know where to draw the line and crossed it on various occasions”. It blamed the BRE’s more senior management for allowing the organisation to “become much closer to its clients” and having “no independent supervision to make sure conflicts of interest were properly managed”.

“Scientific rigour and independence were sacrificed in favour of financial sustainability,” it said.

In its overall conclusions, the report said there had been a “lack of co-ordination” between various parts of the system designed to regulate the built environment, given the different bodies and conflicts of interests involved.

“That is a task only government can undertake,” it said.