By Danielle Aumord

Letters between the London Fire Brigade (LFB) and central government after the fatal fire in 2009 at Lakanal House, South London, have been released by the Grenfell inquiry for the first time, revealing that the government didn’t act on the LFB’s ‘warning to housing providers’ about the danger of combustible materials used in external cladding systems, eight years before the Grenfell fire.

The panels used at Lakanal House were made of combustible high-pressure laminate material and had been installed below windows during a refurbishment, but one of them ignited after a blaze broke out of a flat window, spreading flames up the building and killing six people.

Notes drafted by a senior LFB officer warning of the ‘significant threat’ posed by façade fires just three weeks before Grenfell fire could be described as both chilling and prophetic – and were also revealed at the public inquiry for the first time.

The notes for a presentation, due to be delivered at a conference the week after the Grenfell fire in 2017, said: ‘I believe that the codes and fire engineering principles that we use to design fire safety into buildings are excellent but façade fire and uncontrolled spread of fire outside of tall buildings is a significant threat to effectiveness of the many systems within the building’.

‘This is a vulnerability that we can design out of buildings by ensuring the limited combustibility of the façade and where any doubt exists at the design or specification stage we should be seeking independent testing of façade materials to provide assurance that they are of limited combustibility.’

The public inquiry also heard Rita Dexter, the former deputy LFB commissioner, accept that the ‘stay put’ approach to fire safety in tower blocks “can’t be trusted”.

It’s also been reported that the government has fully redacted pre-Grenfell guidance on the evacuation of disabled people from high-rise buildings during fires, after being threatened with a judicial review by the family of Sakina Afrasehabi, who died at the fire alongside her sister Fatima.

New statutory guidance is expected in the coming weeks after the consultation closed in the summer.

The inquiry into the Grenfell fire also heard that the LFB missed a deadline to implement the recommendations from the Lakanal House fire inquest and on top of that, failed to tell the coroner.

Former LFB director of operational resilience and training, Gary Reason, was asked about a report he wrote in July 2014 for a meeting of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA) strategy committee to discuss the work of the Lakanal House Working Group. The group had been set up 12 months prior to help to review the brigade’s progress in implementing its action following the South London fire.

Lakanal House coroner Frances Kirkham issued the LFB with a letter in March 2013 with recommendations aimed at preventing future fatalities. These included introducing training for the brigade’s incident commanders to ‘enhance their performance’. But the training wasn’t implemented by July 2014 – the time of the next LFEPA strategy meeting – and wasn’t completely rolled out until 2016.

Mr Reason told the inquiry that whilst budget cuts imposed by Boris Johnson during his time as London mayor were ‘particularly difficult’ for the LFB, they weren’t the root cause of the delayed response in implementing the recommendations. ‘Nothing that we did in relation to responding to the coroner’s recommendations was limited or inhibited by budgetary constraints as far as I’m aware,’ he said.

Training provision was privatised during Mr Johnson’s time as mayor, with contractor Babcock International taking over responsibility for training staff. The inquiry has heard that this relationship resulted in difficulties making swift changes to training, particularly in the early years, as opposed to budgetary constraints.

Lawyers for the Grenfell bereaved and survivors – Daniel Friedman QC, Professor Leslie Thomas QC, and Imran Khan QC – told the inquiry that the risk of a large cladding fire had been well known within the brigade and that the LFB failed by not preparing for the possibility of one.
Mr Friedman said that the risks of cladding fires were raised at senior level at the LFB and were even highlighted within their PowerPoint presentations – although the information was never shared with frontline fire services or allowed to influence their policy.

The public inquiry’s phase one report also concluded that the first incident commanders at the Grenfell fire “were faced with a situation for which they had not been properly prepared”.

In a further blow to the LFB, it was heard that expert witness Dr Ivan Stoianov believed that if the fire fighting equipment available on the night of the tragedy had of been used correctly, it would’ve been ‘capable of launching water to the top of the building’.

He accused them of not using the equipment correctly ‘because of a fundamental misunderstanding of the technical features of water supply and a consequential failure to alter incident strategies to secure greater water flow’.

On the night of the tragedy hoses directed at the tower’s lower levels weren’t able to put the fire out, but Mr Friedman thinks that by ‘launching the water to the top’ of the building the firefighters at the scene could’ve reduced the speed of the downward spread of fire and bought more time to escape for those trapped inside.

Evidence potentially pointing towards this was found in the late escape from the tower by some of the residents initially trapped on floors where water was being directed towards externally. For example, Antonio Roncolato escaped from the tenth floor at 6.05am and Elpidio Bonifacio from the eleventh floor at 8.07am.

The Grenfell public inquiry continues.