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There's significant political interest in finding a corporate scandal here. This was a building full of poor people in one of the richest areas in the world.

There's significant political interest in finding a corporate scandal here. This was a building full of poor people in one of the richest areas in the world. The local government pushed the installation of the cladding for aesthetic reasons and ignored serious safety complaints from the residents. The national government voted against banning this cladding - and many of the MPs who voted against are landlords who had a financial interest.

teucris 6y ago
I don’t see how exposing a corporate scandal helps politicians whose job it is to pass laws to keep this kind of thing from happening. The article itself says that these companies sold their products in the UK because the regulations were lagging behind. Can’t it be both a government and a corporate scandal?
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Attention is a limited resource, both on the individual level and the aggregate. If your investigation uncovers a corporate scandal, it limits the ability of the public to focus on the government failings.
  - dash2 6y ago
    That seems unlikely. If this blows up in the press, people will become more interested in both corporate and government failings - which are deeply intertwined in this case, anyway.
- KaiserPro 6y ago
  The regulation is fine. Its the policing. Companies were allowed to change fire tests to make their products look better. I honestly can't see how on earth this is was allowed. It was always my understanding that you had to submit your product to a third party for testing, and that third party was vetted. Then there is the low grade corruption endemic in construction in the UK. The fact that large councils have Quantity surveyors on a percentage fee, rather than a fixed fee, is a big problem.
- coldcode 6y ago
  I fail to see how this is any different that Boeing 737 Max which killed even more people. Everyone looked the other way and ignored real engineering, just to make more bucks (or pounds). Sadly I think that even is the company CEOs had their heads chopped off (as was common in England centuries ago) would change the behavior of cheating to make more money.
- justinclift 6y ago
  If they can make it so the companies that produced the cladding have to pay for refitting the various buildings, it's a pretty huge win for government(s). Those companies have deep pockets too, so the government may feel like they're a good target in this instance.
chrisseaton 6y ago
> for aesthetic reasons It doesn't make much material difference, but I think it was more to do with insulation and saving energy, rather than aesthetics.
- netsharc 6y ago
  Wikipedia says all three.. It seems their priorities list were: 1/2/3. Insulation, Energy, Aesthetics 4. Cost 5. Material that doesn't burn up and torch people when it catches fire... Since you're just guessing ("I think"), my guess is if the tower wasn't in the richest neighborhood of London, the council wouldn't give a shit about its insulation and energy savings. And my guess is they added these reasons to make themselves look benevolent instead of saying "We're adding cladding because the tower looks shit otherwise."
  - csours 6y ago
    > Since you're just guessing ("I think"), my guess is if the tower wasn't in the richest neighborhood of London, the council wouldn't give a shit about its insulation and energy savings. And my guess is they added these reasons to make themselves look benevolent instead of saying "We're adding cladding because the tower looks shit otherwise." Actually, one of the reasons for the beautification is that it was quite close to some expensive real estate. Oh, actually we're agreeing. I read your comment wrong.
    - hummusman 6y ago
      Building regulations in the Uk mandate a minimum standard of fabric energy efficiency regardless of location, both for renovations and for new builds. The Greater London Authority is quite strict on this for new build developments and I suspect that carries through to renovations. It’s more the other way round in that developers are required by local authorities to meet efficiency targets, but ending up cutting corners to achieve it on the cheap
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    > my guess is if the tower wasn't in the richest neighborhood of London, the council wouldn't give a shit about its insulation and energy savings This seems backward to me - why do you think a council with more financial pressure care less about their bottom line, and a council with less financial pressure care more?
tarkin2 6y ago
This is my reading of it too. I think a lot in government - and let's no forget Grenfell was government housing - would love for the blame to placed elsewhere.
- willyt 6y ago
  This is the crux of it really, it wasn’t really government housing any more. It was owned and operated by a independent entity called a tenant management organisation, a nonprofit organisation constituted for the purpose of allowing the government to offload the responsibility of running social housing properly. Likewise the government also privatised the building inspection system which is now also much more vulnerable to corruption. So it was a government screw up, but not in the American sense that ‘the government screws up everything they run’, but in the sense that the government set up a flawed semi privatised system which is prone to corruption at lots of levels.
  - tarkin2 6y ago
    Agree. And that makes it worse. The government washed their hands of responsibility - in the name of their favourite mantra "shrinking the state" - and the results are horrific to see. If government, and those who profit from these schemes, can shirk responsibility and point their finger elsewhere, they'll suffer little electoral repercussions.
    - Retric 6y ago
      It’s an odd complaint to say government wants to shrink. That’s a political stance / opening for corruption, not a governmental goal. It’s an endless cycle of people wanting less government oversight until they realize why it was there in the first place.
- Retric 6y ago
  It was owned and run by a "TMO" not the government. It was subsided by the government but that no more makes it a government building than Amazon is a government organization because they get tax breaks.
saos 6y ago
> many of the MPs who voted against are landlords who had a financial interest. Unfortunately the same MPs who were trying to force us back to the office even though coronavirus was still spreading
- secondcoming 6y ago
  Can you point out any proof that the government was trying to 'force' anyone back to the office. It doesn't ring any bells with me (someone who has been WFH in the UK since March)?
  - cbzbc 6y ago
    I assume the poster was referring to this kind of messaging: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53942542 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53942542 https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/boris-s-back-to-work-campaign-is-strangely-un-conservative https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/boris-s-back-to-work-cam... Which arguably doesn’t constitute being ‘forced’ but was followed up by the usual government outriders in the press.
    - secondcoming 6y ago
      Yes, back in August where, by my experience of living in London at the time, things were actually looking like they were going back to normal in terms of being able to socialise. The pubs were back to normal except had to sign in when you entered and it was table service only. I have about 5 pub apps on my phone.
      - cbzbc 6y ago
        Yes, in August after a long period of lockdown, when schools were due to go back and when Whitty had warned that the UK was at the limits of lockdown easing: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/live/2020/jul/31/uk-coronavirus-large-areas-of-northern-england-put-back-in-lockdown-after-rise-in-cases https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/live/2020/jul/31/uk-coro... It was at that point that the government (and the right wing press) were trying to get people to start going back into the office (and when YouGov were publishing polls that showed that the age group most in favour of people going back into the office were the retired).
marcinzm 6y ago
It seems to me, an outsider, that MPs in the UK can get away with pretty much anything and they know it. The whole pedophile scandal and it's essential disappearance comes to mind.
- peteretep 6y ago
  You are wrong. Several went to prison in recent memory for small amounts of fraudulently claimed expenses: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_parliamentary_expenses_scandal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_parliamentary...
- walshemj 6y ago
  You know that was basically the police jumping on one witness who turned out to be a fantasist? this is similar to the whole q annon fantasy about piza parlors and child sex rings in the US MP's have gone to prison for 4/5 years for stuff (the cash for questions case) that would be considered normal practice in the US
- Veen 6y ago
  The "pedophile scandal" was the work one fantasist, himself a pedophile, making up lies. He is currently in jail serving an 18-year prison sentence for those lies. The real scandal is the way the police behaved, harassing very elderly people who had served their country for decades with no evidence other than the ravings of an easily discredited lunatic.
  - pmachinery 6y ago
    You mean the Establishment allowed its own police to investigate crimes by members of the Establishment and it turned out that accusers against the Establishment are the real bad ones and Establishment figures are all just innocent old war heroes? My word, who could have predicted that twist? It's the easiest, and most obvious, thing in the world for a regime to kill a scandal or exposure of a conspiracy by poisoning the well with outrageous and easily exposed claims by easily discredited accusers.
sleepydog 6y ago
It also looks like the various government agencies mentioned in the article are either compromised or really phoned it in while certifying these products.
noja 6y ago
The government decided to let the construction companies self-certify (yes, really) the safety of their own work! (To "cut red tape").
- goatinaboat 6y ago
  The government decided to let the construction companies self-certify (yes, really) the safety of their own work! (To "cut red tape"). You’ll find this happening everywhere. Such Boeing self-certifying the 737 Max.
- sagarm 6y ago
  And when the self-certification is fraudulent, presumably they will face few or no repercussions.
csours 6y ago
"Governments are corporations, my friend" - Mitt Romney, probably. More and more it seems like the line between government and corporation is blurring; it was probably always thus, and I don't have any strong evidence to say it's getting blurrier, but that's how it seems.
- Finnucane 6y ago
  The key here is that no one in the chain--not the product manufacturers, not the sellers, the construction company, the regulators who were supposed to be on watch, etc, had any interest or incentive to actually ensure that the product was safe and being used appropriately. Until it was too late and people died. And yeah, the slow dissolution of the division between the corporate and government is a real trend.
LatteLazy 6y ago
Plus literally zero action has been taken about the same cladding on similar buildings in the 2.5 years since this happened...
- easytiger 6y ago
  This is a complete lie. Almost every relevant building in the UK is or has been assessed is undertakening remedial work on this and other fire safety matters. The amount of lies and misinformation in this thread is beyond belief
  - LatteLazy 6y ago
    Last I checked most places were still arguing over who'd pay for it. Here's a story from Oct 2020 showing London largest housing association haven't started yet: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-51851900 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-51851900 I'd be happy to be corrected. What percentage has been fixed?
    - easytiger 6y ago
      "fixing" is not something that could happen over night. It took significant time to define the parameter of risk used to apply guidance on the issues and those are subject to nuance in every unique situation. There are finite resources and experts and many works take multiple years to implement. Thousands of buildings are undergoing this process. Perhaps you'd care to demonstrate your point by providing a list of relevant buildings not currently in this process?
      - recursive 6y ago
        The time span in question is 2.5 years. "Over night" is only mentioned by you.
        easytiger 6y ago
        Why would I need to mention a time span? Everything takes time. The implication of your argument is that this isn't complete or even done at all, which just isn't true
disabled 6y ago
> cladding for aesthetic reasons Cladding is used primarily for insulation and energy conservation. I think the concept of "cladding" is more of a UK and European thing though. > There's significant political interest in finding a corporate scandal here. There are all sorts of unethical scandals with various forms of unethical social experimentation. It's everywhere within the corporate world, and there are also open source projects with unethical experiments going on. You just have to look and pay attention. A lot of these groups play it off like they have done proper due process, when they have not. Then they have their PR flacks take the reigns using distracting and emotive language to justify their unethical projects. Everyone who works on projects should read this article. Pay attention to Table 3 in particular. I keep it on my desk as a reminder of what is ethical vs unethical. An Ethical Framework for Evaluating Experimental Technology: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4912576/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4912576/
- avianlyric 6y ago
  > Cladding is used primarily for insulation and energy conservation. I think the concept of "cladding" is more of You’re not wrong, but emails from Kensington council made it quite clear they considered Grenfell an eyesore, and cladding was seen as a method of improving the aesthetic appeal of the building.
  - michaelt 6y ago
    Kensington council are certainly partly responsible for the loss of life. In particular, they set a low budget for the renovation - then rejected all the bidders who weren't using the cheap flammable materials for being too expensive. But the council's intention in starting the project was insulate poor people's homes free of charge, while making the area look nicer. I don't see anything wrong with the intention - it's the budget and implementation where they screwed up.
    - edh649 6y ago
      They didn’t reject the bidders because of the materials, they were rejected due to the overall bid price. They had a budget (£8 million iirc), most came in at ~£11 million except the winning bid which was at ~£9 million. They then engaged in some shady pre negotiation with them to reduce their bid before accepting it. After accepting it the contractor realised some of their values were wrong so in addition to attempting to find hundreds of thousands of pounds of saving from the council, they were also trying to save hundreds of thousands due to their own misestimates. Part of this led them to select aluminium cladding over the originally specified zinc cladding which was much less flammable but much more expensive.
KaiserPro 6y ago
Ex council resident here. This block was clad as part of the "warm safe and dry" initiative. This was funding provided by central government to make sure that council housing was energy efficient, resistant to both criminal and antisocial damage. Also fixing roofs. You'd be surprised how many time roofs fail on council houses. > The national government voted against banning this cladding This isn't really true. They voted against a specific amendment that demanded that rented accommodation be fit for purpose. (Local councils have had the power to condemn accommodation, but they then have to re-house the tenants. its really complex.) The scandal here is in three parts: 1) The people that inspect building regulations are paid for by the developers, and not by councils. So there is lots of "optionality" in an otherwise good set of rules 2) The fire ratings of materials appears to not be independently vetted. I'm not sure how they are vetted, but this is a massive failure in the entire system. 3) The firebrigade having shit kit, also failed to learn from larkenhall. > ignored serious safety complaints from the residents Local residents always complain about everything. I know because I used to be the vice chair of the Tenants and residents association. 25% of the time they are correct. Grenfell has some interesting features: 1) it wasn't being managed by the local council. It was owned and run by a "TMO" this is quite common. 2) they appear to have added new flats, which subsidised the works, again quite common. 3) leaseholders were not billed for the repairs. This is very unusual. Normally they'd be liable for a pro-rated proportion of the total bill (ie if the building has 100 flats of the same size and 10million pounds spent, they would be liable for 100k) I was stung for 50 grand, others in my estate had bills of 70k+ This is not the first time that a block of flats has killed people because of shoddy work. What is unusual in this case is that according to the paper work, the work was done to the correct standard. I felt this tragedy closely. As a fellow council resident, I know how easily it could have happened to me. Fortunately for us, we chose our house specifically with fire in mind (larkenhall fire having happened months before) I was lucky because I had a choice. If I had been a tenant, I'd have little choice.
- secondcoming 6y ago
  > 3) leaseholders were not billed for the repairs. I would assume that most, if not all, of the Grenfell residents were renting. I don't think they'd be liable for repairs?
Stierlitz 6y ago
> There's significant political interest in finding a corporate scandal here .. The scandal being safety standards being diluted by previous governments and the use of inflammable material in the tiles. The tiles being installed to beautify the tower. So as the tower would not spoil the view of the more expensive nearby towers.
- cm2187 6y ago
  I believe the motivation is mostly energy saving (climate change), not aesthetics. In france there is also a programme to sponsor adding cladding on all houses, with similar abuse by small unscrupulous firms which install anything and collect the subsidy.
  - Stierlitz 6y ago
    You just contradicted by main point. It was precisely aesthetics that Grenfell Tower was covered in inflammable tiles. Inflammable tiles being used instead of the more expensive ones, to make more money for the commercial companies. Who previously got the laws diluted to allow the use of inflammable tiles on the outsides of high-rise buildings. They got round the law, by sandwiching the inflammable material between two sheets of aluminum and then getting the sandwich certified as fire retardant. "Grenfell cladding approved by residents was swapped for cheaper version" https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/30/grenfell-cladding-was-changed-to-cheaper-version-reports-say https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/30/grenfell-cla...
easytiger 6y ago
This comment is entirely part of the problem. Insubstantial inferences and half truths are not useful
et2o 6y ago
You seem pretty dismissive of the article, which does present significant evidence of corporate malfeasance.
- ojnabieoot 6y ago
  Indeed this is particularly egregious: > When retested in 2007 as part of a different system [the insulation] failed combustion tests dramatically. Kingspan has argued this was not a consequence of its product, but the firm's own internal report warned the new insulation had performed ‘very differently’ — burning on its own and continuing after the test fire was put out. > But the market was not told of these findings, nor that the product had changed. In fact, when the country’s largest private building control firm, the National House Building Council (NHBC) threatened to reject the product due to fears over its combustibility in the mid 2010s, Kingspan called in the lawyers and threatened it with defamation. The NHBC backed down. This doesn’t mean that the government gets off scot-free but obviously this is a major corporate scandal that deserves to be investigated regardless of perceived political motivations.

teucris 6y ago

I don’t see how exposing a corporate scandal helps politicians whose job it is to pass laws to keep this kind of thing from happening. The article itself says that these companies sold their products in the UK because the regulations were lagging behind. Can’t it be both a government and a corporate scandal?

ashtonkem 6y ago
Attention is a limited resource, both on the individual level and the aggregate. If your investigation uncovers a corporate scandal, it limits the ability of the public to focus on the government failings.
- dash2 6y ago
  That seems unlikely. If this blows up in the press, people will become more interested in both corporate and government failings - which are deeply intertwined in this case, anyway.
KaiserPro 6y ago
The regulation is fine. Its the policing. Companies were allowed to change fire tests to make their products look better. I honestly can't see how on earth this is was allowed. It was always my understanding that you had to submit your product to a third party for testing, and that third party was vetted. Then there is the low grade corruption endemic in construction in the UK. The fact that large councils have Quantity surveyors on a percentage fee, rather than a fixed fee, is a big problem.
coldcode 6y ago
I fail to see how this is any different that Boeing 737 Max which killed even more people. Everyone looked the other way and ignored real engineering, just to make more bucks (or pounds). Sadly I think that even is the company CEOs had their heads chopped off (as was common in England centuries ago) would change the behavior of cheating to make more money.
justinclift 6y ago
If they can make it so the companies that produced the cladding have to pay for refitting the various buildings, it's a pretty huge win for government(s). Those companies have deep pockets too, so the government may feel like they're a good target in this instance.

chrisseaton 6y ago

> for aesthetic reasons It doesn't make much material difference, but I think it was more to do with insulation and saving energy, rather than aesthetics.

netsharc 6y ago
Wikipedia says all three.. It seems their priorities list were: 1/2/3. Insulation, Energy, Aesthetics 4. Cost 5. Material that doesn't burn up and torch people when it catches fire... Since you're just guessing ("I think"), my guess is if the tower wasn't in the richest neighborhood of London, the council wouldn't give a shit about its insulation and energy savings. And my guess is they added these reasons to make themselves look benevolent instead of saying "We're adding cladding because the tower looks shit otherwise."
- csours 6y ago
  > Since you're just guessing ("I think"), my guess is if the tower wasn't in the richest neighborhood of London, the council wouldn't give a shit about its insulation and energy savings. And my guess is they added these reasons to make themselves look benevolent instead of saying "We're adding cladding because the tower looks shit otherwise." Actually, one of the reasons for the beautification is that it was quite close to some expensive real estate. Oh, actually we're agreeing. I read your comment wrong.
  - hummusman 6y ago
    Building regulations in the Uk mandate a minimum standard of fabric energy efficiency regardless of location, both for renovations and for new builds. The Greater London Authority is quite strict on this for new build developments and I suspect that carries through to renovations. It’s more the other way round in that developers are required by local authorities to meet efficiency targets, but ending up cutting corners to achieve it on the cheap
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > my guess is if the tower wasn't in the richest neighborhood of London, the council wouldn't give a shit about its insulation and energy savings This seems backward to me - why do you think a council with more financial pressure care less about their bottom line, and a council with less financial pressure care more?

tarkin2 6y ago

This is my reading of it too. I think a lot in government - and let's no forget Grenfell was government housing - would love for the blame to placed elsewhere.

willyt 6y ago
This is the crux of it really, it wasn’t really government housing any more. It was owned and operated by a independent entity called a tenant management organisation, a nonprofit organisation constituted for the purpose of allowing the government to offload the responsibility of running social housing properly. Likewise the government also privatised the building inspection system which is now also much more vulnerable to corruption. So it was a government screw up, but not in the American sense that ‘the government screws up everything they run’, but in the sense that the government set up a flawed semi privatised system which is prone to corruption at lots of levels.
- tarkin2 6y ago
  Agree. And that makes it worse. The government washed their hands of responsibility - in the name of their favourite mantra "shrinking the state" - and the results are horrific to see. If government, and those who profit from these schemes, can shirk responsibility and point their finger elsewhere, they'll suffer little electoral repercussions.
  - Retric 6y ago
    It’s an odd complaint to say government wants to shrink. That’s a political stance / opening for corruption, not a governmental goal. It’s an endless cycle of people wanting less government oversight until they realize why it was there in the first place.
Retric 6y ago
It was owned and run by a "TMO" not the government. It was subsided by the government but that no more makes it a government building than Amazon is a government organization because they get tax breaks.

saos 6y ago

> many of the MPs who voted against are landlords who had a financial interest. Unfortunately the same MPs who were trying to force us back to the office even though coronavirus was still spreading

secondcoming 6y ago
Can you point out any proof that the government was trying to 'force' anyone back to the office. It doesn't ring any bells with me (someone who has been WFH in the UK since March)?
- cbzbc 6y ago
  I assume the poster was referring to this kind of messaging: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53942542 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53942542 https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/boris-s-back-to-work-campaign-is-strangely-un-conservative https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/boris-s-back-to-work-cam... Which arguably doesn’t constitute being ‘forced’ but was followed up by the usual government outriders in the press.
  - secondcoming 6y ago
    Yes, back in August where, by my experience of living in London at the time, things were actually looking like they were going back to normal in terms of being able to socialise. The pubs were back to normal except had to sign in when you entered and it was table service only. I have about 5 pub apps on my phone.
    - cbzbc 6y ago
      Yes, in August after a long period of lockdown, when schools were due to go back and when Whitty had warned that the UK was at the limits of lockdown easing: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/live/2020/jul/31/uk-coronavirus-large-areas-of-northern-england-put-back-in-lockdown-after-rise-in-cases https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/live/2020/jul/31/uk-coro... It was at that point that the government (and the right wing press) were trying to get people to start going back into the office (and when YouGov were publishing polls that showed that the age group most in favour of people going back into the office were the retired).

marcinzm 6y ago

It seems to me, an outsider, that MPs in the UK can get away with pretty much anything and they know it. The whole pedophile scandal and it's essential disappearance comes to mind.

peteretep 6y ago
You are wrong. Several went to prison in recent memory for small amounts of fraudulently claimed expenses: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_parliamentary_expenses_scandal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_parliamentary...
walshemj 6y ago
You know that was basically the police jumping on one witness who turned out to be a fantasist? this is similar to the whole q annon fantasy about piza parlors and child sex rings in the US MP's have gone to prison for 4/5 years for stuff (the cash for questions case) that would be considered normal practice in the US
Veen 6y ago
The "pedophile scandal" was the work one fantasist, himself a pedophile, making up lies. He is currently in jail serving an 18-year prison sentence for those lies. The real scandal is the way the police behaved, harassing very elderly people who had served their country for decades with no evidence other than the ravings of an easily discredited lunatic.
- pmachinery 6y ago
  You mean the Establishment allowed its own police to investigate crimes by members of the Establishment and it turned out that accusers against the Establishment are the real bad ones and Establishment figures are all just innocent old war heroes? My word, who could have predicted that twist? It's the easiest, and most obvious, thing in the world for a regime to kill a scandal or exposure of a conspiracy by poisoning the well with outrageous and easily exposed claims by easily discredited accusers.

sleepydog 6y ago

It also looks like the various government agencies mentioned in the article are either compromised or really phoned it in while certifying these products.

noja 6y ago

The government decided to let the construction companies self-certify (yes, really) the safety of their own work! (To "cut red tape").

goatinaboat 6y ago
The government decided to let the construction companies self-certify (yes, really) the safety of their own work! (To "cut red tape"). You’ll find this happening everywhere. Such Boeing self-certifying the 737 Max.
sagarm 6y ago
And when the self-certification is fraudulent, presumably they will face few or no repercussions.

csours 6y ago

"Governments are corporations, my friend" - Mitt Romney, probably. More and more it seems like the line between government and corporation is blurring; it was probably always thus, and I don't have any strong evidence to say it's getting blurrier, but that's how it seems.

Finnucane 6y ago
The key here is that no one in the chain--not the product manufacturers, not the sellers, the construction company, the regulators who were supposed to be on watch, etc, had any interest or incentive to actually ensure that the product was safe and being used appropriately. Until it was too late and people died. And yeah, the slow dissolution of the division between the corporate and government is a real trend.

LatteLazy 6y ago

Plus literally zero action has been taken about the same cladding on similar buildings in the 2.5 years since this happened...

easytiger 6y ago
This is a complete lie. Almost every relevant building in the UK is or has been assessed is undertakening remedial work on this and other fire safety matters. The amount of lies and misinformation in this thread is beyond belief
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  Last I checked most places were still arguing over who'd pay for it. Here's a story from Oct 2020 showing London largest housing association haven't started yet: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-51851900 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-51851900 I'd be happy to be corrected. What percentage has been fixed?
  - easytiger 6y ago
    "fixing" is not something that could happen over night. It took significant time to define the parameter of risk used to apply guidance on the issues and those are subject to nuance in every unique situation. There are finite resources and experts and many works take multiple years to implement. Thousands of buildings are undergoing this process. Perhaps you'd care to demonstrate your point by providing a list of relevant buildings not currently in this process?
    - recursive 6y ago
      The time span in question is 2.5 years. "Over night" is only mentioned by you.
      - easytiger 6y ago
        Why would I need to mention a time span? Everything takes time. The implication of your argument is that this isn't complete or even done at all, which just isn't true

disabled 6y ago

> cladding for aesthetic reasons Cladding is used primarily for insulation and energy conservation. I think the concept of "cladding" is more of a UK and European thing though. > There's significant political interest in finding a corporate scandal here. There are all sorts of unethical scandals with various forms of unethical social experimentation. It's everywhere within the corporate world, and there are also open source projects with unethical experiments going on. You just have to look and pay attention. A lot of these groups play it off like they have done proper due process, when they have not. Then they have their PR flacks take the reigns using distracting and emotive language to justify their unethical projects. Everyone who works on projects should read this article. Pay attention to Table 3 in particular. I keep it on my desk as a reminder of what is ethical vs unethical. An Ethical Framework for Evaluating Experimental Technology: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4912576/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4912576/

avianlyric 6y ago
> Cladding is used primarily for insulation and energy conservation. I think the concept of "cladding" is more of You’re not wrong, but emails from Kensington council made it quite clear they considered Grenfell an eyesore, and cladding was seen as a method of improving the aesthetic appeal of the building.
- michaelt 6y ago
  Kensington council are certainly partly responsible for the loss of life. In particular, they set a low budget for the renovation - then rejected all the bidders who weren't using the cheap flammable materials for being too expensive. But the council's intention in starting the project was insulate poor people's homes free of charge, while making the area look nicer. I don't see anything wrong with the intention - it's the budget and implementation where they screwed up.
  - edh649 6y ago
    They didn’t reject the bidders because of the materials, they were rejected due to the overall bid price. They had a budget (£8 million iirc), most came in at ~£11 million except the winning bid which was at ~£9 million. They then engaged in some shady pre negotiation with them to reduce their bid before accepting it. After accepting it the contractor realised some of their values were wrong so in addition to attempting to find hundreds of thousands of pounds of saving from the council, they were also trying to save hundreds of thousands due to their own misestimates. Part of this led them to select aluminium cladding over the originally specified zinc cladding which was much less flammable but much more expensive.

KaiserPro 6y ago

Ex council resident here. This block was clad as part of the "warm safe and dry" initiative. This was funding provided by central government to make sure that council housing was energy efficient, resistant to both criminal and antisocial damage. Also fixing roofs. You'd be surprised how many time roofs fail on council houses. > The national government voted against banning this cladding This isn't really true. They voted against a specific amendment that demanded that rented accommodation be fit for purpose. (Local councils have had the power to condemn accommodation, but they then have to re-house the tenants. its really complex.) The scandal here is in three parts: 1) The people that inspect building regulations are paid for by the developers, and not by councils. So there is lots of "optionality" in an otherwise good set of rules 2) The fire ratings of materials appears to not be independently vetted. I'm not sure how they are vetted, but this is a massive failure in the entire system. 3) The firebrigade having shit kit, also failed to learn from larkenhall. > ignored serious safety complaints from the residents Local residents always complain about everything. I know because I used to be the vice chair of the Tenants and residents association. 25% of the time they are correct. Grenfell has some interesting features: 1) it wasn't being managed by the local council. It was owned and run by a "TMO" this is quite common. 2) they appear to have added new flats, which subsidised the works, again quite common. 3) leaseholders were not billed for the repairs. This is very unusual. Normally they'd be liable for a pro-rated proportion of the total bill (ie if the building has 100 flats of the same size and 10million pounds spent, they would be liable for 100k) I was stung for 50 grand, others in my estate had bills of 70k+ This is not the first time that a block of flats has killed people because of shoddy work. What is unusual in this case is that according to the paper work, the work was done to the correct standard. I felt this tragedy closely. As a fellow council resident, I know how easily it could have happened to me. Fortunately for us, we chose our house specifically with fire in mind (larkenhall fire having happened months before) I was lucky because I had a choice. If I had been a tenant, I'd have little choice.

secondcoming 6y ago
> 3) leaseholders were not billed for the repairs. I would assume that most, if not all, of the Grenfell residents were renting. I don't think they'd be liable for repairs?

Stierlitz 6y ago

> There's significant political interest in finding a corporate scandal here .. The scandal being safety standards being diluted by previous governments and the use of inflammable material in the tiles. The tiles being installed to beautify the tower. So as the tower would not spoil the view of the more expensive nearby towers.

cm2187 6y ago
I believe the motivation is mostly energy saving (climate change), not aesthetics. In france there is also a programme to sponsor adding cladding on all houses, with similar abuse by small unscrupulous firms which install anything and collect the subsidy.
- Stierlitz 6y ago
  You just contradicted by main point. It was precisely aesthetics that Grenfell Tower was covered in inflammable tiles. Inflammable tiles being used instead of the more expensive ones, to make more money for the commercial companies. Who previously got the laws diluted to allow the use of inflammable tiles on the outsides of high-rise buildings. They got round the law, by sandwiching the inflammable material between two sheets of aluminum and then getting the sandwich certified as fire retardant. "Grenfell cladding approved by residents was swapped for cheaper version" https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/30/grenfell-cladding-was-changed-to-cheaper-version-reports-say https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/30/grenfell-cla...

easytiger 6y ago

This comment is entirely part of the problem. Insubstantial inferences and half truths are not useful

et2o 6y ago

You seem pretty dismissive of the article, which does present significant evidence of corporate malfeasance.

ojnabieoot 6y ago
Indeed this is particularly egregious: > When retested in 2007 as part of a different system [the insulation] failed combustion tests dramatically. Kingspan has argued this was not a consequence of its product, but the firm's own internal report warned the new insulation had performed ‘very differently’ — burning on its own and continuing after the test fire was put out. > But the market was not told of these findings, nor that the product had changed. In fact, when the country’s largest private building control firm, the National House Building Council (NHBC) threatened to reject the product due to fears over its combustibility in the mid 2010s, Kingspan called in the lawyers and threatened it with defamation. The NHBC backed down. This doesn’t mean that the government gets off scot-free but obviously this is a major corporate scandal that deserves to be investigated regardless of perceived political motivations.