Fire probe farce
Judge leading inquiry admits it won’t go far enough for victims Council tries to ban Press from meeting – then scraps it
‘It’s an absolute fiasco’
THE inquiry into the Grenfell Tower inferno was engulfed by chaos last night before it had even begun.
The retired judge appointed to conduct the probe admitted it was unlikely to satisfy survivors and families of the victims.
And councillors were condemned for an attempt to ban the Press from a meeting at which the inquiry was due to be discussed.
Sir Martin Moore-Bick, the former Appeal Court judge who will lead the inquiry, vowed to lead a ‘vigorous’ investigation that would get to the truth behind the fire as ‘quickly as possible’.
But after meeting survivors during a visit to the scene of the blaze in North Kensington where at least 80 died, he admitted: ‘I’m well aware the residents and the local people want a much broader investigation and I can fully understand why they would want that.
‘Whether my inquiry is the right way to achieve that I’m more doubtful.’
The inquiry is likely be limited to the cause of the fire, how it spread and preventing a future blaze rather than addressing allegations of criminality.
Grenfell residents also complained that they had not been consulted over Sir Martin’s appointment.
The row prompted warnings the probe would mirror the farce surrounding the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, now on its fourth chairman.
Labour MP Lisa Nandy said: ‘ This feels worryingly similar to the child abuse inquiry. The Grenfell inquiry must have the confidence of survivors.’
Michael Mansfield QC, who has been in contact with residents, said it was ‘unbelievable that lessons are not learnt’ from the abuse inquiry.
Sir Martin, who retired last December, controversially allowed Westminster City Council to rehouse a mother-of-five 50 miles away from her home because a benefits cap had made her flat unaffordable. The decision was later overturned by the Supreme Court.
Last night the first Kensington council meeting to discuss the Grenfell disaster was abandoned after the Press and public won the right to attend.
The local authority had initially announced the meeting of senior councillors would be held in private amid fears of ‘disruption’. Protesters tried to storm Kensington Town Hall on June 16 two days after the tragedy.
The media, including the Daily Mail, then won a High Court order overturning the ban on journalists attending. But council leader Nicholas Paget-Brownmeeting reporters midway arrived, cancelledthroughsaying theirafter the presence would ‘prejudice’ the forthcoming public inquiry.
He added: ‘We can’t have an unprejudiced discussion in this room with the public inquiry that is about to take place if journalists are recording and writing our comments.’ who Councillor represents Robert the Atkinson.Notting Dale ward in which Grenfell Tower is based, described the decision by members as ‘ an absolute fiasco’.
About a dozen residents from the area had gathered outside Kensington Town Hall in the hopebut tensionsof attendingrose whenthe meeting,security guards refused them entry.
Teacher Moyra Samuels, a member of the Justice For Grenfell group, said: ‘We’re bloody angry they are not going to come out and offer a damn explanation as to why we are not able to get in. ‘They have not actually stood up and talked to the community, which is despicable.’
Earlier in the day, Sir Martin said: ‘The purpose of this inquiry is to discover the truth about what happened at Grenfell Tower, so we can learn lessons for the future and ensure a tragedy of this kind never happens again. It is vitally important the inquiry be open, transparent and fair to all those whose involvement with Grenfell Tower comes under scrutiny.’
But Joe Delaney, from the Grenfell Action Group, said the fire was ‘a criminal matter’ and expressed fears that Sir Martin’s background in commercial law made him unsuitable.
‘He seems to want to keep the scope very narrow,’ he said. ‘We are more looking at why [the fire] started in the first place… why were residents ignored?’
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has called for an interim report to be published this summer.
TWO weeks on and the blackened shell of Grenfell Tower still has the power to shock. The flowers and pictures of the missing against nearby railings, and cars left parked in the street by owners who will never return to claim them, have an unbearable poignancy.
People in North Kensington have a right to be angry. But no one has a right to a monopoly on anger, or grief. And no politician, let alone Labour’s Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, has cause to claim the moral high ground with his accusation that the victims were ‘murdered by political decisions’ made by the Tories.
For 15 years I have been campaigning to update building regulations in England to improve fire safety and to have sprinklers fitted routinely to council and other social housing, and I can’t recall a single Government minister or Opposition frontbencher — Labour, Conservative or Lib Dem — who ever campaigned with us.
I first became involved at the request of fire chiefs after producing a BBC documentary on car crashes. I’d persuaded the then Roads Minister, Peter Bottomley, to set targets for reducing deaths on the roads.
Could I get similar political support to cut fire deaths? It turned out the answer was ‘no’.
A Government department (under Labour) did help pilot my idea for ultra-low-cost sprinklers, but it never won official support. Time and again I lobbied politicians, time and again I was sent away empty-handed.
Three times I’ve addressed the Local Government Association ( LGA) pointing out how the risks are disproportionate in subsidised housing — ‘It’s the poor wot gets the flame’ — as three times they applauded and did nothing.
Among ministers I lobbied were Mike O’Brien (Lab), Alan Whitehead (Lab), John Prescott (Lab), Phil Hope (Lab), Jim Fitzpatrick (Lab), Parmjit Dhanda (Lab), Sadiq Khan (Lab), George Howarth (Lab) and Brandon Lewis (Con).
PHIL
HOPE was dismissive — ‘I can’t see what a broadcaster has to do with this’ — even though I was accompanied by a fire chief. The others were polite and even sympathetic. But they all said ‘no’.
Why? The blunt reality is that those politicians were simply doing as they were told.
Ministers are mostly here today, gone tomorrow, and few would claim to be expert in their briefs. Except for those who know it all because they are gripped by rigid ideology, most ministers do listen to their advisers. That is why the background to Grenfell Tower is much more complex than John McDonnell’s intemperate smear would have us believe.
If there is any group whose actions allowed the catastrophe to happen it was these advisers. I say this with a heavy heart because there were senior firefighters among them. While I and many fire chiefs have been passionate about the need for sprinklers — and are angry about what has happened — not everyone agreed.
To be a chief fire officer, you sometimes need to be political. And to be the Government’s chief fire and rescue adviser you have to be political.
Successive governments wanted to cut red tape, they all wanted to save money and — here’s the key to why nothing was done — fire deaths were going down anyway.
How could advisers justify more regulation, let alone demand universal sprinkler systems, when the problem was diminishing. Advisers were just trying to balance risk against cost and while I think they gave bad advice, they should not be cast as villains.
Even so it is ironic that one of them, Sir Ken Knight, who as former London fire commissioner resisted our calls, is now in charge of making all public buildings safe as chairman of a new fire safety panel.
He had every chance to do so after the Lakanal House blaze in South London in 2009 in which six people died trapped in their homes. Then he said it was ‘not considered practical or economically viable’ to retrofit sprinklers in tower blocks. Will 80 confirmed deaths — and possibly more — at Grenfell now change his mind?
Four years ago I warned LGA councillors that ‘every major advance in fire safety has been inspired by a startling tragedy. If there’s another calamity there’ll be another political panic and another belated political response.’
It took 11 dead in a blaze at the Rose & Crown in Saffron Walden in Essex 48 years ago to pave the way for building regulations in the Fire Precautions Act. The hotel had no proper alarm, no fire doors, no emergency exit signs, and no extinguishers.
It took 56 dead at the Bradford Football Club fire in 1985 to inspire a raft of safety features for stadiums.
It took 31 dead in the King’s Cross fire in 1987 before investment in London Underground to make it safer after decades of budget constraints.
As BBC1’s Panorama revealed last week, the All- party Parliamentary Fire and Rescue group specifically warned three years ago that those living in tower blocks such as Grenfell were ‘at risk’.
This week it emerged that the London Fire Brigade wrote to all boroughs and councils warning them of the risk from cladding on tall buildings earlier this year following a fire in Shepherd’s Bush. Why is it that always we have to be shocked out of complacency?
The task now is to make sure this never happens again, and finding blame is not the same as finding a solution.
First, we need to recognise how bad things are. The audit just conducted by the London borough of Camden shows just how lax fire safety has become, with 1,000 fire doors missing in tower blocks, exposed gas pipes, obstructed escape routes — and the use of nonfire-retardant cladding.
And yes, of course, we need an exhaustive inquiry into what went wrong at Grenfell Tower. But we know enough already not to prevaricate over two key decisions.
The first is to update building inspections and regulations — fast — and ensure that they are updated routinely. Never again should cladding or other materials be allowed to accumulate in buildings and infrastructure without having been tested for fire safety. To date, more than 95 buildings — including hospitals and student accommodation — are deemed at risk.
The second task is to follow the example of Wales where, from 2016, all new houses, flats, care homes etc had to be fitted with fire suppression systems, usually sprinklers. Sprinklers are the gold standard in fire control. They are cheap, simple and effective. They are roughly the price of fitted carpets, even when retro-fitted.
In 95 per cent of cases where buildings are comprehensively protected a fire is controlled by sprinklers alone.
That means the fridge fire believed to have started the Grenfell blaze would almost certainly have been put out before firefighters arrived.
Even had it spread to the flammable cladding outside, it would have most probably failed to take hold in the apartments above. At the very least, sprinklers would have washed down the toxic smoke and kept the temperatures low.
SPRINKLERS
are not invincible. They can’t function if the water supply fails. But — and this is the truth that makes me so angry — no one ever dies from fire when a home is protected by automatic sprinklers. That’s why in the U.S. they’re installing 40 million a year.
But let’s not be persuaded that the risk is only in high-rise towers. There are 300-400 fire deaths a year and most victims live in low-rise properties.
We need sprinklers in all social housing, care homes, and multi-occupation premises including schools — and let’s not forget our hospitals.
Whatever Sir Ken Knight said in the past, where necessary, we need to retro-fit them. And we need the National Fire Chiefs Council, meeting in a few days, to show leadership.
There is a terrible anger after Grenfell. Instead of trading political insults we must put it to good use.