MYTHS AND FACTS
The victims were ‘murdered by political decisions’ say Labour Austerity was to blame It was ALL the council’s fault The death toll’s been suppressed. Those are the lurid allegations. Here, we calmly sort the facts from the fiction
THE CLAIM: It all happened because of ‘Tory austerity’.
THE TRUTH: Jeremy Corbyn recently used Prime Minister’s Questions to claim the Grenfell tragedy has ‘ exposed the disastrous effects of austerity’.
‘When you cut local authority budgets by 40 per cent, we all pay a price in public safety,’ he said. ‘ Fewer building control inspectors, fewer planning inspectors.’
A similar tune was played by demonstrators at the so-called ‘Day of Rage’ protest where widely distributed placards read: ‘Tories have blood on their hands.’
In response, Theresa May argued that if declining numbers of local government fire inspectors contributed to the disaster, then it’s actually Labour, and not the Tories, who are to blame.
The reason? Back in 2005, Tony Blair’s government passed a Regulatory Reform Fire Safety Order that allowed any ‘responsible person’ to examine buildings. Previously, that job had to be done by in-house local authority staff.
Finally, the claim that Tory ‘austerity’ has reduced fire safety seems at odds with Home Office figures showing that fires in high-rise, purpose-built flats fell by 40 per cent, from 1,261 to 714, between 2010, when David Cameron took office, and this year.
THE CLAIM: Victims were ‘murdered’ by fire service cuts.
THE TRUTH: With the characteristic charm of a man who once said of a female Tory MP, that it would be nice to ‘lynch the bitch’, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell recently declared that Grenfell victims had been ‘murdered by political decisions’.
Speaking at Glastonbury, he argued: ‘The decision to close fire stations and to cut 10,000 firefighters and then to freeze their pay for over a decade contributed to those deaths inevitably, and they were political decisions.’
In London, the number of firemen has dropped from 6,900 to 5,700 over the past six years. However, there is no evidence whatsoever to support John McDonnell’s argument that this made a difference to the death toll.
The fire service performed admirably on the night of the disaster, reaching the scene six minutes after the first 999 call, which was received at 12.54 am on Wednesday, June 14. A total of 40 fire engines and 300 men were used to tackle the blaze.
London’s Fire Commissioner, Dany Cotton, has repeatedly stated that ‘there were no issues about numbers of firefighters’ on the tragic night.
‘ The number of fires has reduced significantly over the past ten years,’ she has said, which has allowed the service to function perfectly safely with reduced staffing levels.
‘I would not want any further cuts — I think we’ve demonstrated we need the fire engines we’ve got — but actually, on a day-to-day basis, we manage very well with the resources we have.’
Cotton’s point is backed up by statistics: between 2001 and 2011, the number of fires in London fell from 55,000 to 27,000 per year. In 2016, there were just over 20,000.
Fatalities have declined over the same period from 142 to 36 each year. Per capita, residents of the city are now ten times less likely to be killed by fire than during the Eighties. THE CLAIM: Cladding was added to ‘improve the view’ from luxury homes nearby. THE TRUTH: For all the complaints about ‘austerity’, £8.6 million of public money was spent refurbishing the 24- storey Grenfell Tower in a huge project that began in 2012 and finished in May last year. This equates to £66,500 for each of the 129 flats.
This project saw the building covered with blue cladding, which seems to have been responsible for allowing a small fire, caused by a faulty fridge, to tear through the building with devastating effect.
So why was cladding added? One potentially controversial reason is detailed in a 2014 planning report, where Kensington and Chelsea Council argued that it would make a ‘welcome improvement’ to the building’s aesthetics.
‘ Changes to the external appearance of the building will also provide positive enhancements to the appearance of the area,’ it reads.
The report notes that the changes will particularly improve the view of Grenfell
Tower from ‘nearby conservation areas’ such as Ladbroke Grove, a fashionable area where Victorian terraced homes cost north of £2 million.
Some have therefore claimed that innocent poor people died because of a misguided attempt to improve life for their wealthy neighbours. Or as the Left-wing Huffington Post website put it in a report shared virally on social media: ‘Racism and classism killed the residents of Grenfell Tower.’
This claim, while provocative, ignores two crucial facts, however.
First, improving the appearance of a building also happens to benefit the people who live in it.
Second, as we shall see, environmental concerns played a far bigger role in the decision to add the cladding.
THE CLAIM: Green regulations were to blame.
THE TRUTH: Recent decades have seen cladding added to buildings across Britain to make our housing stock more energy efficient.
After Gordon Brown’s government signed the 2008 Climate Change Act, which commits us to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent, the process went into overdrive. Like all councils, Kensington and Chelsea was placed under huge pressure to reduce its carbon footprint.
The ‘energy efficiency refurbishment’ of Grenfell Tower was a key part of plans to curb emissions. A document, drawn up in 2012, outlining the rationale for overhauling the building, said that ‘improving the insulation levels of the walls, roof and windows is the top priority of this refurbishment’.
The overhaul also involved installing double glazing and energy-efficient boilers to flats.
Unfortunately the most effective (and coincidentally the cheapest) material is often flammable. That was certainly the case with the Reynobond PE cladding used. It follows, therefore, that the disaster was at least partly caused by environmental concerns.
THE CLAIM: Building firms broke the law.
THE TRUTH: The Minister for London, Greg Hands, has claimed the Reynobond PE cladding used on Grenfell Tower was ‘not in accordance with UK building regulations’.
Chancellor Philip Hammond appears to agree, saying that it’s his ‘understanding’ that the material is banned.
Their view appears to be based on the government’s Building Regulations 2010, which state that ‘the external walls of the building shall adequately resist the spread of fire’ while ‘taking into account the height, use and position of the building’.
Exactly what constitutes ‘adequately resist’ is, of course, open to debate. Indeed, existing rules are at best vague; and at worst highly contradictory.
It seems clear that, in the case of Grenfell, the cladding failed to stop fire spreading. However, the Grenfell contractors, led by a firm called Rydon, could point out that ‘Approved Document B’, published by the Government alongside the 2010 regulations, contains official guidance indicating that the material used at Grenfell was nonetheless perfectly legal.
The document states that ‘external surfaces’ of buildings above 18 metres high are required to be ‘ Class 0’. This means they can have ‘limited combustibility’. The Reynobond PE cladding falls squarely into this category.
Adding to the regulatory farce, it’s possible for flammable material such as plastic to achieve a ‘Class 0’ rating by being sandwiched between aluminium sheets, as was the case at Grenfell. But when aluminium melts, the plastic burns.
Significantly, in the U.S., so-called ‘limited combustibility’ cladding is only allowed on buildings up to 30m tall. After that point, they must have ‘ zero combustibility’.
To this end, Arconic, the American manufacturer of Reynobond, warns that it’s ‘crucial’ not to install the product on high-rise buildings. Yet Arconic still sold it for use on 220ft Grenfell Tower — and now blames UK ‘local building regulations’ for allowing it.
THE CLAIM: Ministers ignored warnings about flammable cladding. THE TRUTH: Successive housing ministers, both Labour and Conservative, have ignored advice to change the law to replace ‘limited combustibility’ with ‘zero combustibility’ in the guidance above.
The recommendation was first made in 2000 after an inquiry into a 1999 tower block fire in Ayrshire that killed a man. A coroner in 2013 then called for a review of fire regulations ‘ with particular regard to the spread of fire over the external envelope of a building’.
The guilty housing ministers include, for Labour, Nick Raynsford, Lord Falconer, Lord Rooker, Keith Hill, Yvette Cooper, Caroline Flint, Margaret Beckett and John Healey. For the Tories, the job was held by Grant Shapps, Mark Prisk, Kris Hopkins, Brandon Lewis and Gavin Barwell.
Exactly why successive politicians, of both parties, failed to act is unclear. However it’s notable that only one Housing Minister (Yvette Cooper) held the job for more than two years.
THE CLAIM: The Tory Council tried to cut costs.
THE TRUTH: Kensington and Chelsea is one of the richest locations in the world, and its Tory council, which boasts cash reserves of some £300 million, prides itself on running a tight financial ship.
The refurbishment of Grenfell Tower was originally budgeted at £6.9 million, but by 2014 projected costs had ballooned to £10.3 million, leading to pressure for its managers to achieve savings.
As a result, a decision was taken to replace non- combustible zinc panels, which were originally to go on the exterior of Grenfell, with aluminium ones. This saved around £293,000.
Reynobond PE, which has a flammable polyethylene core, was duly selected. It ended up being around £5,000 cheaper than a less flammable aluminium alternative, Reynobond FR.
In its defence, the council has
said the decision was taken as part of a process ‘ensuring that public funds were being well managed’, pointing out that it is duty-bound to spend taxpayers’ money as sensibly as possible, and adding that the cladding used appears to have been perfectly legal.
Lest anyone seek to make party-political points about the decision, it is worth noting that almost identical cladding has been used on a number of tower blocks controlled by Labour-run councils such as Camden. Theresa May correctly pointed out that the cladding of tower blocks across Britain actually began under the previous Labour government. THE CLAIM: Safety inspectors hid failings. THE TRUTH: Although Grenfell Tower was owned by Kensington and Chelsea Council, it is run by the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation [KCTMO] under rules introduced by the Blair government in 2002 to give tenants of council housing a greater say in how their property is managed.
The organisation is run by a board of directors made up of eight tenants, four councillors and three independent members. It not only hired contractors Rydon for the £8.6 million refit, but hired a former fireman, Carl Stokes, as Fire Risk Assessor.
Under rules also introduced by the Blair government, anyone can become a fire risk assessor, and no qualifications are necessary. Mr Stokes earned £244,000 over seven years of his contract.
In a letter notifying the Board of the appointment, KCTMO’s health and safety adviser, Janice Wray, said that Mr Stokes charged a ‘competitive price’ and was willing to challenge ‘excessive’ demands from the fire service.
He has also said that his remit did not cover the outside walls of the building. While guidance from the Local Government Association says a fire risk assessor should check ‘suitability of floors and walls to resist fire- spread’, it does not mention cladding or exterior walls.
Apropros the KCTMO which managed the tower, it’s worth noting that Emma Dent Coad, the new Labour MP for Kensington, who has been fiercely critical of Tories in the wake of the tragedy, was actually a member of its board during the period when the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower was discussed.
She also sat on the council’s housing scrutiny committee when it investigated the refurbishment.
The Press and politicans are ‘covering up’ the true number of victims.
In the febrile aftermath of the blaze, tensions were stoked by ‘fake news’ reports accusing the Government of trying to downplay the scale of the tragedy.
A hard-Left pro-Corbyn internet blog called Skwawkbox claimed that officials had issued a ‘D-notice’ (an official request to editors not to publish sensitive information) banning publication of the death toll.
The story was totally false, as confirmed by the Defence and Security Media Advisory Committee, which issues D-notices. But it was shared 16,000 times on Facebook and picked up by several other online news outlets.
Meanwhile, singer Lily Allen told Channel Four news that she ‘ had been hearing from people’ that close to 150 had died, ‘and many of those are children’. She alleged that the death count was being deliberately ‘ downplayed by the mainstream media’.
The Labour MP David Lammy, meanwhile, said he had ‘no idea’ if such claims were true, but declared himself ‘sympathetic’ to the theory. In fact, responsible news outlets were merely reporting the official police death toll — as they are required to following a major disaster, to prevent false rumours gaining currency.
Today it stands at 80, though authorities say the number could still rise. Police say they made ‘87 recoveries’ of human remains from within the building. But because of the catastrophic damage, that does not mean they necessarily belong to 87 separate people. Twenty- one victims have been formally identified.
The appointed judge isn’t fit to run the public inquiry into the tragedy.
A retired judge, Sir Martin Moore-Bick, 70, has come under sustained attack since being chosen to lead an inquiry.
Lammy declared this week that a ‘white upper-middle class man’ shouldn’t have been chosen for the job and that it was a ‘shame’ a woman or ethnic minority judge hadn’t been found.
Emma Dent Coad, the Labour MP for Kensington, declared: ‘How anybody like that could have any empathy for what these people have been through, I just don’t understand.’ She called for him to be replaced by ‘someone who can understand humans’.
Since Mrs Dent Coad has never met Moore-Bick, it is unclear what her prejudice is based on.
Despite false claims that he was, in the words of a local quoted yesterday by the Guardian, ‘handpicked by Theresa May’, the retired Court of Appeal judge was selected for the onerous task by the Lord Chief Justice, in keeping with protocol designed to ensure the independence of the judiciary.
Sir Martin is highly respected by his peers and eminently qualified to carry out what will be a highly complex process. Educated at grammar school in Kent, with a 48year legal career, he presided as a judge over several high- profile cases involving both commercial contracts (a web of which will now need to be unpicked) and catastrophic disasters on sea and land.
Meanwhile Justice4Grenfell, a campaign group, has threatened to withdraw support for the inquiry unless he is removed.
This has led to widespread reports that ‘survivors’ want Moore-Bick to stand down, although no Grenfell survivor or grieving relative has yet gone on the record demanding that he go.
When the Mail aproached five Grenfell survivors this week, all said that the identity of the person running the inquiry was not currently an issue for them.
The Government has broken its promise to re-house victims.
Mrs May promised that every person made homeless by the fire would receive an offer of accommodation within three weeks. That deadline came and went on Wednesday. Scores of families have yet to be re-housed.
But establishing whether that pledge has been kept is not simple. For in a staggering indictment of the state of social housing in the UK, no one seems to know exactly who was living in Grenfell Tower.
Some flats appear to have been illegally sub-let; others were occupied by house guests of the official resident. Police trying to establish the death toll say housing records bear scant relation to the electoral roll, and neither tally with reality.
So far, 158 homeless families in total have been identified, but many of them were not residents of Grenfell Tower, but were evacuated from nearby buildings.
But here’s the rub: only 14 have accepted offers of temporary accommodation. Another 125 have turned down offers for a variety of reasons. Several have rejected multiple offers.
Partly to blame is the understandable anguish that many residents are experiencing. Mahad Egal, who escaped from the fourth floor with his wife and two children, told Sky News that he’d turned down an offer of a tower block flat in Westminster because ‘it’s traumatising to be going up flights of stairs or high-rise towers’.
Sid-ali Atmani, who lived with his wife and daughter on the 15th floor, told the BBC on Wednesday that he’d been offered a two-bedroom flat 15-20 minutes from his old home, but turned it down because it was too far away and not big enough (he believes he is entitled to a three-bed property).
Nineteen families have not yet been offered temporary accommodation, largely because they don’t want to be contacted at present and may still have family in hospital. Some of them are believed to be out of the country.