Seven years after a fire in a London high-rise building killed 72 people, an exhaustive public inquiry is set to report on the lapses and mistakes that turned a small fire in an apartment kitchen into the deadliest blaze on British soil since World War II.
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00:00We then consider the involvement of the government in the form of the then Department for Communities
00:10and Local Government, the way in which it sought to monitor the causes of fires when
00:15they occurred, and most importantly, the warning signs that were emerging from as early as
00:221991 that some kinds of materials, in particular aluminium composite material panels with unmodified
00:32polyethylene cores, were dangerous. We find that there was a failure on the part of the
00:39government and others to give proper consideration at an early stage to the dangers of using
00:46combustible materials in the walls of high rise buildings. In Part 3, we set out our
00:52findings about the testing and marketing of the main products used in the refurbishment,
00:59the Raynabon panels, the Celotex RS5000 insulation, and the small amount of Kingspan K15 insulation.
01:09We discovered that there had been systematic dishonesty on the part of manufacturers involving
01:17deliberate manipulation of the testing processes and calculated attempts to mislead purchasers
01:24into thinking that what were combustible materials complied with the provisions of the statutory
01:31guidance that advised against their use. That dishonest approach to marketing was compounded
01:39by the failure of two of the bodies that provided certificates of compliance with the building
01:45regulations and statutory guidance, the British Board of Agreement and Local Authority Building
01:52Control, to scrutinise the information provided to them with sufficient care and exercise
02:00the degree of rigour and independence that was to be expected of them. We find that the
02:06organisation was badly run and failed to respond to criticisms of its treatment of residents
02:12contained in independent reports produced in 2009. It is clear that for some years before
02:21the fire, relations between the TMO and residents were marked by distrust, antagonism and increasingly
02:29bitter confrontation, we find that the residents were badly let down. The picture is one of
02:36a persistent failure to give sufficient importance to the demands of fire safety, particularly
02:43the safety of vulnerable people, and a failure on the part of the Council to scrutinise that
02:51aspect of the organisation's activities adequately.