On 14 June 2017, Grenfell Tower burned rapidly and intensely, fuelled in part by the equivalent of 32,000 litres of petrol wrapped around it. By most accounts, Grenfell burned as it did because combustible insulation and cladding on the outside of the building aided the fire in racing up 20 storeys in half an hour. It burned because building regulations and fire safety standards failed. The tragedy shocked us all, and it shook our belief in the government’s ability to ensure safe homes and adequate protection for the people living in them. What is even more shocking is that nothing in the failed system has changed.
Every piece of official guidance and regulation that allowed combustible insulation and cladding to go up on that building is still in place. Every loophole and ambiguity remains the same. Nothing significant has changed that would prevent a fire like Grenfell Tower from happening again.
There are many issues behind this tragedy, and it is right that the public inquiry and the police undertake thorough investigations to establish the facts about what went wrong. But this will take time, and common sense tells us there are steps we can take now to improve the fire safety of buildings and reassure the residents of those buildings that they are safe.
One of those common-sense options is to stop using combustible insulation and cladding on tall and sensitive buildings that require longer evacuation times. Doing so would be a simple and effective way to safeguard people’s lives. Let’s remember a basic truth: non-combustible materials don’t burn; combustible materials do. No amount of creative marketing can change that.
It has become clear to everyone that the current system of fire safety guidance and regulation is insufficiently rigorous, unduly complex and too open to subjective interpretation. The government must remove this complexity and ambiguity by requiring that all mid and high-rise, as well as sensitive and high-occupancy buildings like schools, hospitals and care homes be insulated and clad only with non-combustible (Euroclass A1 and A2) materials.
Doing so would bring the UK in line with best practices elsewhere in Europe, where it’s simply not allowed to install these kinds of combustible materials on tall building facades.
Taking this approach would also eliminate entirely the need to conduct large-scale tests for these types of buildings. We should remember that these tests were developed to create a pathway for combustible materials to be approved as “safe” for tall buildings. They are conducted behind closed doors, with near-perfectly installed products, and with no “weak spots” like windows or other design features you would see on a real building.
These tests are intended to ensure public safety, yet they are paid for by manufacturers who can rerun tests until they get the desired results and are under no obligation to publish the test reports.
How can we trust that as a guide to fire safety?
It gets worse. Another option to get combustible insulation and cladding onto tall buildings is to pay private consultants to conduct “desktop studies” to say that, in their opinion, an untested combination of combustible materials would be safe in a fire. No specific professional qualifications are needed to write a desktop study. The reports are secret, so there is no way to scrutinise them. No one else in Europe allows this to take place, and we should not allow it to continue here. The government, however, has set up a committee to reinforce and formalise the use of desktop studies, rather than eliminating them.
What is most worrying is the lack of urgency to put this right. The Building Regulations Review led by Dame Judith Hackitt is relying on “culture change” within the industry to provide the solution.
The Review has asked the industry to come up with the answers to problems that it created and is relying on a narrow set of advisers and institutions who have overseen the status quo to fix the problem. It has shut out voices from the Grenfell community, independent fire safety experts, and numerous organisations that have warned for years that the use of combustible materials on tall buildings could have tragic consequences.
This is the wrong approach. Public safety should not be left to vested interests. Public safety is the ultimate responsibility of government.
We need strong leadership from the government to require that only non-combustible insulation and cladding be used on mid and high-rise and sensitive buildings. The government has already made clear that this is an obvious option. What is not clear is why this obvious option has not been adopted as policy to provide urgent clarity to building owners and reassurance to residents.
We owe it to the people who lost their lives at Grenfell Tower, and to all residents, to act now to keep their homes safe. Let’s get on with it.
Why take the risk to do otherwise?
Gilles Maria is senior vice-president at ROCKWOOL.
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