Buck-passing and lies for commercial gain

Step by step over 400 days spanning over four years, the Grenfell inquiry’s Lead Counsel Richard Millet KC, grilled witnesses who gave evidence and concluded that “every death (at the West London fire – was) avoidable”. He attacked companies and organisations giving evidence for what he describes as an ongoing “merry-go-round of buck-passing”.

For example, Celotex, a manufacturer accused of “dishonestly fabricating” a fire test on the insulation used on Grenfell Tower and whose staff say they were made to “lie for commercial gain”, went on to also claim that the firm is a victim of an “agenda” to blame it for the fire. Lawyers for the firm even went on to describe its highly critiqued failure to disclose the devastating fire tests before the fatal blaze as a “non-issue”.

Over the course of the inquiry, we have learned that three decades worth of political and corporate choices resulted in the Grenfell Tower tragedy and took more lives in any single event since the Blitz in World War Two. But in the last five and a half years, not a lot has changed on a Governmental level in terms of the factors that led up to the fire, apart from perhaps the rotation of prime ministers inhabiting Downing Street.

Despite promising to implement all of the inquiry’s findings, the government has rejected recommendations from the inquiry’s phase one report, saying that requiring building owners to implement the recommendations would not be “practical, proportionate or safe”.

By stark contrast, the London Fire Brigade (LFB), have so far implemented 90% of the recommendations made to them by the inquiry which in itself speaks volumes.

Appearing on behalf of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), Martin Seaward KC referred to £29m worth of cuts made to fire services in the years before the fire, implemented in the capital by then-mayor Boris Johnson. Cuts that resulted in the closure of ten fire stations and 13 fire engines. “In London, this led to cuts to the number of firefighters… appliances and to the predetermined attendances and cuts in the control room and the fire safety departments,” Mr. Seaward said, “all of which directly impacted on the Grenfell Tower disaster.”

Mr Seaward also chronicled how the LFB’s training – being outsourced to an external company, Babcock, in 2012 – “damaged (their) ability to respond to training needs.”

“The FBU believes the real culprits of the disaster are those in power at the top, ie, ministers following the deregulatory agenda, to the detriment of safety, and the directors of industry on which they depended for sponsorship and funding,” he added.

Mr Seaward also spoke on the issue of a switch, which should have given firefighters control of the Grenfell Tower’s two lifts, only one of which was actually working on the night of the tragedy on 14 June 2017, within which 72 people passed. The switch in question did not function, which meant that the functioning lift remained available for the residents and could not be used by firefighters to rescue people. However many who left Grenfell Tower in the early part of the fire, used the lift to escape and as a result, got out with their lives intact.

Expert evidence heard at the inquiry, concluded that the switch on the functioning lift not working actually resulted from firefighters using a key that did not fit, but the FBU argued that it was in fact a result of the key mechanism being contaminated by builders’ debris during the refurbishment to the block.

Mr Seaward, within legal summaries, presented photographs that he said suggested the key mechanism had been cleaned before the expert examined it, and said his conclusion was therefore “based upon (the expert’s) factual error about the extent of the blockage”.

Housing Quality Network has been told that the police are not expected to hand their first folder of evidence over to the Crown Prosecution Service until towards the end of 2024 – after the publication of the inquiry report – and that criminal proceedings in court for the Grenfell fire are unlikely to start until 2025.

Lawyers for the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO), Grenfell Tower’s former managing body, have confirmed that some of its former staff members are being “investigated by the police for serious criminal offences” in relation to the fire.

It’s also been previously confirmed that 40 people have been interviewed under caution, but it hasn’t been clarified which organisations they came from.

A spokesperson for Grenfell United, a group of survivors and bereaved family members, said: “We ask all those who have stood with us until now to keep going. The phase (the public inquiry) might be over, but the battle for justice is not, and we will continue until those culpable are prosecuted.”