The path forward from the Grenfell Tower Inquiry

Talking to Catherine Levin for a keynote session at The Fire Safety Event, I found myself answering the question I am often asked: how can we chart a path forward from the Grenfell Tower Inquiry and know that the changes being made will make a difference?

It is a very difficult question to answer in general terms. Anyone who understands the fire safety sector, will be well aware that things have changed: new legislation, new regulators, new competency requirements and endless conversations. 

But anyone who knows the sector also knows that some of its key weaknesses remain – margins take precedence over safety, testing and certification isn’t what it should be and enforcement to drive out bad practice is patchy at best. And so the question is a difficult one. Have we changed enough? And have we changed the right things?

My time at The Fire Safety Event left me veering between optimism and pessimism. 

The first conversation I had on arriving, as I picked my way between coffee-wielding delegates and the welcoming grins of exhibitors, concerned fire doors. Specifically – a weakness in the legislation which makes it difficult to force building owners to fix defective doors under Landlord and Tenant legislation. One large housing association, I was told, is prevaricating over the fix of more than 30 doors in a single block as a result. 

Shortly after my session, I was straight into another conversation about fire doors – this time their testing and the differences between what goes into the testing facility and what comes out of the factory and into people’s homes: different sized kick plates, door handles, peep holes and signage. How will all of those impact the fire performance in the real world? And why are we making the same mistake of testing in the most favourable conditions and then selling whatever works best for the job?

And then, over a coffee, a discussion about firefighting led to a blunt acknowledgement that we are still building buildings which firefighters won’t be able to fight fires in.

How do we really expect crews to reach the 45th floor of a residential high rise carrying their breathing apparatus? How do we expect the vast modular towers, in particular, to perform if a blaze enters the cavities between modules? “From a fire safety perspective, too many buildings are still shit,” was the blunt assessment.

So do these three conversations tell us we haven’t changed?

Maybe. But maybe not. In fact, perhaps the fact that they are being voiced out in the open at a conference like this tells us how much awareness has changed in eight years.

And they sit within an environment where out expectations have shifted. Building owners are now required by law to carry out annual checks on fire door self-closers. We (and the regulators) regard it as a failure if they don’t. But eight years ago, no one was paying any attention to their doors.

And yes, fire door testing still leaves a lot to be desired. But we’ve also largely moved on from the pre-Grenfell norm of plastic-shell-with-a-lump-of-phenolic-foam to doors with a strong timber core. There is also much increased scrutiny around construction products and a welcome unease around claims about desktop studies and ‘field of application’ reports across the products sector. Many building owners and contractors are reverting to the tried-and-tested as a result.

And while some new builds continue to push the boundaries of risk beyond what may be acceptable, the regulator’s gateway process (for all its delays) is forcing a much tighter focus on safety.

So are the new requirements for sprinklers, the ban on combustible facade materials for high rise residential buildings and the forthcoming requirement for second stairs. All of these things are new.

It’s why the question is complicated: in some areas we’ve moved forward. In others we haven’t. And more subtly, some people in this sector have moved forward. And some have not.

In my session, I talked about the failings of Grenfell Tower’s hapless fire risk assessor: his invented qualifications and embarrassing copy and paste errors.

Talk to those who know the sector, and you will know that the one-man-band fire risk assessor, with no quality assurance, intent on undercutting rivals is a beast that remains alive and well. But so are those who would never dream of risking safety with anything other than a highly thorough assessment.

The latter will hopefully soon become the norm: once the inquiry recommendations are implemented all fire risk assessors will be required to register with a UKAS-accredited body which will – we hope – drive this sort of behaviour out of the industry for good.

But, as a reminder of how complex these questions are, at a later session on the same stage, conversation turned to the recent scandal surrounding Adam Kiziak, the fire engineer suspended by the Institution of Fire Engineers, for failing to adhere to standards of accuracy and vigour.

Here though, the question was not of competence but of conduct. Kiziak was a properly qualified fire engineer, with good experience and registration. The problem was that he behaved badly.

And so a registration scheme, and enhanced competency requirements alone will not rescue us – Kiziak would have got through them with flying colours. Which means we need meaningful accountability as well for when competent people don’t do as they should.

Competence is an excellent aim, and one which will improve the industry. But it has some cynics among its most vocal supporters: those who stand to be enriched by the need to provide mandatory training and registration to thousands every year once the new requirements are passed. Accountability and ethics seem, somehow, to be less popular topics for debate.

Which is a reminder to everyone in this space that it’s not just a question of what we can do, but how and why we do it.

Everywhere you looked at the conference, there was evidence of new technological advances – smart alarms, cutting edge fire doors, innovative misting systems, VR training headsets, any number of new apps and a thriving market of expert consultancies, doubtless able to turn their deep knowledge of fire safety to the elimination of unnecessary risk.

Surely, looking at this scene, anyone would conclude that all the current challenges can easily be overcome by this innovative and lively industry. Money is being spent, and the market is providing us with answers.

But our problem is not and never has been that we don’t know how to do it. The problems that led to Grenfell didn’t come so much from a lack of knowledge as a failure to use it to prevent a disaster. Wise advice was outbid by the unscrupulous but cheap.

Highly competent professionals used their skill to maximise profits for themselves and minimise inconvenience for their clients – not to make the country’s buildings more fire safe. 

The trouble is that we didn’t use expertise in the right way. And so there is your answer for how we move forward. Honesty, clarity, accountability. This is a sector which deals with life safety. The standards must always be kept high.

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Read more about the final Grenfell Tower Inquiry Report – New laws and regulation will take years to fix the problems after Grenfell.

Pete’s book, Show me the bodies, is published by Oneworld Publications.