The inquiry into the Grenfell Tower disaster must be ready to dig deep
SIR – While we at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents are pleased to see the beginning of the public inquiry process into the Grenfell Tower disaster, we were concerned to hear the comments of Sir Martin Moore-bick over his doubts as to the scope of the inquiry (report, June 30).
The role of inquiries into disasters is to establish clearly what happened, when, where, how and with what consequences; but the crucial question is always “why”.
The excellent inquiries into tragedies such as the Zeebrugge ferry capsizing in 1987 have shown that asking “why” enough times and at each stage of the process is necessary to understand both the immediate and root causes. The inquiry must look at the policies of government, councils, professional bodies and other organisations to identify whether these had weaknesses that caused poor decision-making, leading to the tragedy. If the inquiry reveals a formulaic “tick-box” approach to decision-making on safety around Grenfell Tower, it will need to delve deeply into this issue and identify the extent to which corporate and public risk committees are really taking their responsibilities seriously. Errol Taylor
Acting Chief Executive, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents Birmingham
SIR – John Heather (Letters, July 1) raises the safety dangers associated with aluminium and asks why lessons that should have been learnt from the losses of Royal Naval ships in the Falklands conflict did not “filter down from military to civilian projects”.
Lessons did in fact filter down to such projects. When the new Lloyd’s building was in an advanced state of construction, the architect, Richard Rogers, learnt of the effect of fire on the aluminium superstructures of HMS Sheffield. Immediately the cladding was changed from aluminium to stainless steel, at an enormous increase in the final cost. The question is why local authorities’ architects, consulting engineers and regulatory bodies then continued to ignore the facts. Chris Rome
Thruxton, Hampshire
SIR – As Jeremy Corbyn and John Mcdonnell, their followers and the BBC continue to make political capital out of the suffering of Grenfell Tower residents, it should be pointed out that it was the Labour government that in 2005 changed the long-standing requirement for fire safety inspections to be carried out by local fire brigades and made it the responsibility of landlords to carry out risk assessments.
That said, the Grenfell tragedy cannot be blamed on any one government. It was the result of failure by successive governments over the past 30 years to heed warnings from fire safety experts here, as well as in the US and Australia, regarding the fire hazards posed by certain types of cladding. Robert Readman
Bournemouth, Dorset