Tower firms ‘will not accept blame’
PRIVATE firms which refurbished Grenfell Tower have refused to admit any responsibility for the catastrophic fire which killed 72 people, despite experts saying the work failed to meet building regulations, an inquiry has heard.
The second phase of the investigation into the disaster opened yesterday, and the inquiry’s chief lawyer accused corporate companies of pointing the finger at each other without accepting any blame.
Built in 1974, the tower was extensively refurbished between 2012 and 2016, most significantly when flammable aluminium composite material cladding was wrapped over its concrete exterior.
The first part of the inquiry found this was the “principal” reason for the rapid spread of flames.
Counsel to the inquiry Richard Millett QC said in his opening remarks: “With the sole exception of RBKC (Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea) not a single core participant involved in the primary refurbishment of Grenfell Tower has felt able to make an unqualified submission against their own interests.
“With that solitary exception Mr Chairman,
one finds in those detailed and carefully crafted statements no trace of any acceptance of any responsibility for what happened at Grenfell Tower.
“Not from the architects, not from the contract managers, main contractors.
“Any member of the public reading those statements and taking them all at face value would be forced to conclude that everyone involved in the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower did what they were supposed to do and nobody made any serious or causative mistakes.
“All core participants who played a material part in Grenfell Tower have laid out a detailed case that it relied on others and how in no way was the work it did either substandard or non-compliant (with building regulations). In every case, what happened was, as each of them would have it, someone else’s fault.”
The second stage of the inquiry will consider how the high-rise block came to be covered in flammable cladding.
It comes after a member of the inquiry panel resigned after she was linked to a charitable arm of the firm which supplied the tower block’s deadly cladding.
Engineer Benita Mehra resigned after it was disclosed she is an immediate past president of the Women’s Engineering Society. According to the society’s website it last year received funding from Arconic for an apprentice conference.
Michael Mansfield QC, representing victims, said there has been “a stunning silence” from Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the Cabinet Office on the resignation of Ms Mehra from the panel. He added there had been “not a word about whether there is going to be a replacement”.
Seventy-two people died as a result of the blaze at the west London block, after an electrical fault with a fridge freezer sparked an inferno.