8 ms·

Grenfell Tower inquiry: key things we’ve learned this year

86 points by vijayr02 6y ago

dazc 6y ago
As someone with a previous career in the UK construction industry, sad to say that none of these 11 things are much of a revelation. What needs to be done, without any unnecessary delay, is for the management of the companies and authorities involved to be put on trial for corporate manslaughter.
- noir_lord 6y ago
  At the minimum they should be held to the same standard as civil engineers who sign off on plans. It's a crazy system we have with misaligned goals/metrics all over the place.
- dijksterhuis 6y ago
  Didn't they agree to be a part of an inquiry on the basis that they would be guaranteed to avoid prosecution, or am I making that up?
  - csours 6y ago
    You are correct, but there are several companies involved and some Arconis employees are claiming that they would be jeopardized under French law if they testified. > "It's unclear whether all the Arconic witnesses will give evidence. Some are arguing that a French law prevents them from disclosing commercial information in foreign judicial proceedings."
- pydry 6y ago
  That's something a Tory government will fight to prevent from happening.
LatteLazy 6y ago
Number 12: if its unclear who has to pay for something, no one will, even if potentially millions of lives could be at risk.
- suvelx 6y ago
  > if its unclear who has to pay for something, It'll fall to the person with the least clout.
  - LatteLazy 6y ago
    Yeah, that's what's happening now. It's been 2 years, so if you rent/lease one of these and you have cash, you're more and more likely to pay yourself even though you're not the landlord/freeholder...
chillydawg 6y ago
Justice delayed is justice denied. I realise we have to go through a process, but there's a bus load of dead people and grieving families and friends waiting and waiting. This delay to justice is awful and I couldn't imagine being on the receiving end of it. There's also a good chance it'll just end with "multiple failures, sozlol" and a couple of fines and everyone jogs on. The whole thing is just disgusting.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  The delay is a tactic to protect the guilty. Nothing is being or will be discovered about Grenfell that wasn't publicly and widely known within weeks. They're waiting until the public anger has dissipated enough that they can weather the reaction when they announce that no one will be punished. The British always do this to save their toffs, see Chilcot or Hillsborough. Everybody has to report on the initial disaster, and after each wave of the media cycle, more outlets decide to stop reporting on the story (or for many, decide if they can get away with stopping.) The government press releases get fewer and trickle to a near stop, so now the only press releases they're getting are from victims groups and lawyers which are easy to ignore. Eventually a report is released that condemns everyone for incompetence and nobody for malice, and a recently retired fall guy is chosen to have some moderate consequences, like a retroactive reduction in rank that slightly affects their pension. If our rulers weren't protected from consequences, they'd have to be competent. Endless delay got Epstein night-jail on a child sex trafficking case that started as one of the most observed prosecutions in the US.
- secondcoming 6y ago
  > Justice delayed is justice denied This is a catchy slogan, but it doesn't really make sense.
  - tremon 6y ago
    What justice is there when a killer gets sentenced to life in prison at his 70th birthday, for a crime he committed when he was 20? What good is it for a man to be acquitted of a crime, when he has already spent 25 years behind bars? What good is it for a family to receive millions in compensation for some wrongdoing, when they've been living in destitute state for more than a decade? In all those cases, the victims have not received "justice" for a major, defining, part of their life. That's what the catchy slogan tries to capture.
mellosouls 6y ago
Although it's mentioned in passing, I think one of the most notable and disgusting things about the affair is the way key witnesses (at least one of whom seems to have been selling himself as some sort of noble whistleblower) have refused to appear citing dubious French law as prohibiting them. The apparent moral cowardice of some people is depressing. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54792111 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54792111 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55382056 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55382056
- ithkuil 6y ago
  " The "blocking statute" of 26 July 1968 (amended on 17 July 1980) prohibits any person, including French companies, subject to international treaties or agreements (in particular the Hague Convention of 18 March 1970) "from requesting, seeking or communicating, in writing, orally or in any other form, documents or information of an economic, commercial, industrial, financial or technical nature with a view to gathering evidence in or in connection with foreign judicial or administrative proceedings." The prohibition, subject to a criminal penalty of six months’ imprisonment and a fine of €18,000, or approximately $20,200 (increased to €90,000, or approximately $100,900 for a legal entity), is designed to protect French companies against Anglo-Saxon discovery mechanism, which allows the litigant (who is sometimes an American competitor) or the US administration to request from the French company the disclosure of documents, including those that may have an economic value for the said company. " If I were a french citizen I'd try to avoid getting a criminal record, a possible prison sentence and a fine. It could destroy my family. The uk should negotiate a better treaty with france to allow these people to testify.
ryantownsend 6y ago
I don’t want to distract from the tragedy itself but, even after all this, more people will continue to suffer due to the subsequent cladding scandal. The UK government are trying to pass the costs of remediation for other cladded buildings on to leaseholders who didn’t have any involvement in the design, build or sign-off of their buildings. Some people are already being bankrupted through extortionate waking watches, mitigation and remediation bills and I’ve even heard that one person in my city (Leeds) has killed themselves due to the stress. According to the select committee reviewing the Building Safety Bill, “the only people who believe leaseholders should pay are the government”. The House of Lords has proposed an amendment to the bill stating that leaseholders won’t be made to pay (note: not forcing the tax payer to pay, just ensuring the leaseholders don’t) and the Housing Committee (namely MP Robert Jenrick) are rejecting this on the basis that the tax payer shouldn’t foot the bill. We’re talking sums amounting to up to £100k being charged to people who paid similar amounts for their apartments in the first place! One affected block was built since Grenfell, so the entire ownership could effectively be in massive negative equity. The government have put together a fund of £1bn for non-ACM cladding remediation, expecting that to cover ~600 buildings, but already over 2,700 buildings have applied and the estimated cost UK-wide is upwards of £15bn. The whole thing is an utter shambles and people are stuck unable to sell their properties (stalling the first time buyer market as they can’t move up to other properties, and meaning they cannot move for work in a time when there are masses of redundancies) or even remortgage!
- lmm 6y ago
  > The House of Lords has proposed an amendment to the bill stating that leaseholders won’t be made to pay (note: not forcing the tax payer to pay, just ensuring the leaseholders don’t) and the Housing Committee (namely MP Robert Jenrick) are rejecting this on the basis that the tax payer shouldn’t foot the bill. How does the amendment ensure leaseholders don't have to pay without putting taxholders on the hook? You can't make money from nowhere.
  - dijksterhuis 6y ago
    In a Venn diagram, "not leaseholders" will be all other space on the diagram. I imagine it's meant to leave all other options on the table (taxpayers, developers and/or anyone else) rather than force a specific choice (except leaseholders).
flybrand 6y ago
Safety is a commons; we have a tragedy of the commons. Capitalism willfully ignores safety when not punished.
- dsego 6y ago
  More and more lately I have the feeling that things won't improve unless heads start rolling. And I mean literally as in people getting beheaded, not figuratively.
csours 6y ago
I've listened to about half of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry Podcast [0], as well as read and heard about it a few other places. I'm not an expert in anything related to this. My comments here are related to what I feel I've learned from this; I'm leaving aside legal/punishment questions. One thing I wish this article called out: Grenfell was not unique. About 400 other high-rise buildings have been or are being remediated for having some combination of the cladding and insulation used at Grenfell. Some of the testimony is absolutely sickening and despicable - the insulation manufacturers coming up with a 'clever' way to lie about the fire rating of their material, and a few other things. But mostly the testimony reminded me of how complicated the world is, and how little we know about our own jobs. (Perhaps this is more unique to me, but I suspect not). The architects felt like they were only specifying a design and the 'look and feel' of materials. The fire safety specialists concentrated their comments on egress and smoke extraction systems. The inspectors concentrated on external appearance. And so on, and so on. Everybody felt like they were just doing their job. Work and real life are complicated, and there are always time and budget pressures, so people just don't have the time and attention to pick up on all the things that we notice after the fact. --- A few brief reflections: Beware of a culture of 'pencil-whipping' tests. If you raise a safety/security concern with your manager and they don't want to know about it, it's a very bad sign. If you have a safety/security concern raise it explicitly in email. Beware of rare events: it was clear from testimony that very few people involved in the project even imagined a large systemic fire risk, it wasn't on their radar. 0: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p066rd9t https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p066rd9t
- dazc 6y ago
  'Work and real life are complicated, and there are always time and budget pressures, so people just don't have the time and attention to pick up on all the things that we notice after the fact.' Local Authorities (such as responsible for the building here) used to employ a 'site agent' to oversee works in order to ensure it was done to proper standard. He/she would have industry experience and considerable authority. Such a person would be unlikely to turn a blind eye to bad practice. But this was seen as an unnecessary cost and contractors are now allowed to self-certify much of their own work. Even where it is a legal requirement for some aspects to be signed-off by another party (such as compliance with building regulations) this can also be contracted out to firms who rely upon the goodwill of contractors for continuity of work. This leads to obvious conflicts of interest and perverse incentives to certify work that isn't up to scratch.
hyko 6y ago
Absolutely awful, a disgrace to humanity. They burnt people alive to profit from their miserable little scam business. No matter how hard I squint, I just can’t make sense of their actions. This list is a terrifying glimpse of how the entire world would end up without effective regulation. People like this would glide to the top on a carpet of skeletons and we’d basically have to re-invent government to stop them.
- monoclechris 6y ago
  The local council should face criminal consequences for these decisions.
jaco8 6y ago
It basically is a fraud with the leaseholder the victim. The system has failed. The government issued occupational permits. The fire services signed their ok. The cladding companies used false reports to get approval. The construction companies made a mess. The solicitors approved the title deeds for signing without checking realities. Now everything is false and needs to be renewed with costs beyond belief. The leaseholder is the consumer and must be protected by consumer protection law and also will need to be compensated for any loss. The government will need to foot the bill and then can claw the costs back from their own departments,cladding and construction companies as well as other parties who failed the leaseholder. The waking watch is another fraud forced upon leaseholders. Two guys walking about with their smartphones playing games or sitting somewhere catching up on study books will not cut it. The freeholder getting kickbacks from the building insurance company , which is saying that anything can be insured at a price , is also laughing on the way to the bank.

86 points by vijayr02 6y ago

dazc 6y ago

As someone with a previous career in the UK construction industry, sad to say that none of these 11 things are much of a revelation. What needs to be done, without any unnecessary delay, is for the management of the companies and authorities involved to be put on trial for corporate manslaughter.

noir_lord 6y ago
At the minimum they should be held to the same standard as civil engineers who sign off on plans. It's a crazy system we have with misaligned goals/metrics all over the place.
dijksterhuis 6y ago
Didn't they agree to be a part of an inquiry on the basis that they would be guaranteed to avoid prosecution, or am I making that up?
- csours 6y ago
  You are correct, but there are several companies involved and some Arconis employees are claiming that they would be jeopardized under French law if they testified. > "It's unclear whether all the Arconic witnesses will give evidence. Some are arguing that a French law prevents them from disclosing commercial information in foreign judicial proceedings."
pydry 6y ago
That's something a Tory government will fight to prevent from happening.

LatteLazy 6y ago

Number 12: if its unclear who has to pay for something, no one will, even if potentially millions of lives could be at risk.

suvelx 6y ago
> if its unclear who has to pay for something, It'll fall to the person with the least clout.
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  Yeah, that's what's happening now. It's been 2 years, so if you rent/lease one of these and you have cash, you're more and more likely to pay yourself even though you're not the landlord/freeholder...

chillydawg 6y ago

Justice delayed is justice denied. I realise we have to go through a process, but there's a bus load of dead people and grieving families and friends waiting and waiting. This delay to justice is awful and I couldn't imagine being on the receiving end of it. There's also a good chance it'll just end with "multiple failures, sozlol" and a couple of fines and everyone jogs on. The whole thing is just disgusting.

pessimizer 6y ago
The delay is a tactic to protect the guilty. Nothing is being or will be discovered about Grenfell that wasn't publicly and widely known within weeks. They're waiting until the public anger has dissipated enough that they can weather the reaction when they announce that no one will be punished. The British always do this to save their toffs, see Chilcot or Hillsborough. Everybody has to report on the initial disaster, and after each wave of the media cycle, more outlets decide to stop reporting on the story (or for many, decide if they can get away with stopping.) The government press releases get fewer and trickle to a near stop, so now the only press releases they're getting are from victims groups and lawyers which are easy to ignore. Eventually a report is released that condemns everyone for incompetence and nobody for malice, and a recently retired fall guy is chosen to have some moderate consequences, like a retroactive reduction in rank that slightly affects their pension. If our rulers weren't protected from consequences, they'd have to be competent. Endless delay got Epstein night-jail on a child sex trafficking case that started as one of the most observed prosecutions in the US.
secondcoming 6y ago
> Justice delayed is justice denied This is a catchy slogan, but it doesn't really make sense.
- tremon 6y ago
  What justice is there when a killer gets sentenced to life in prison at his 70th birthday, for a crime he committed when he was 20? What good is it for a man to be acquitted of a crime, when he has already spent 25 years behind bars? What good is it for a family to receive millions in compensation for some wrongdoing, when they've been living in destitute state for more than a decade? In all those cases, the victims have not received "justice" for a major, defining, part of their life. That's what the catchy slogan tries to capture.

mellosouls 6y ago

Although it's mentioned in passing, I think one of the most notable and disgusting things about the affair is the way key witnesses (at least one of whom seems to have been selling himself as some sort of noble whistleblower) have refused to appear citing dubious French law as prohibiting them. The apparent moral cowardice of some people is depressing. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54792111 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54792111 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55382056 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55382056

ithkuil 6y ago
" The "blocking statute" of 26 July 1968 (amended on 17 July 1980) prohibits any person, including French companies, subject to international treaties or agreements (in particular the Hague Convention of 18 March 1970) "from requesting, seeking or communicating, in writing, orally or in any other form, documents or information of an economic, commercial, industrial, financial or technical nature with a view to gathering evidence in or in connection with foreign judicial or administrative proceedings." The prohibition, subject to a criminal penalty of six months’ imprisonment and a fine of €18,000, or approximately $20,200 (increased to €90,000, or approximately $100,900 for a legal entity), is designed to protect French companies against Anglo-Saxon discovery mechanism, which allows the litigant (who is sometimes an American competitor) or the US administration to request from the French company the disclosure of documents, including those that may have an economic value for the said company. " If I were a french citizen I'd try to avoid getting a criminal record, a possible prison sentence and a fine. It could destroy my family. The uk should negotiate a better treaty with france to allow these people to testify.

ryantownsend 6y ago

I don’t want to distract from the tragedy itself but, even after all this, more people will continue to suffer due to the subsequent cladding scandal. The UK government are trying to pass the costs of remediation for other cladded buildings on to leaseholders who didn’t have any involvement in the design, build or sign-off of their buildings. Some people are already being bankrupted through extortionate waking watches, mitigation and remediation bills and I’ve even heard that one person in my city (Leeds) has killed themselves due to the stress. According to the select committee reviewing the Building Safety Bill, “the only people who believe leaseholders should pay are the government”. The House of Lords has proposed an amendment to the bill stating that leaseholders won’t be made to pay (note: not forcing the tax payer to pay, just ensuring the leaseholders don’t) and the Housing Committee (namely MP Robert Jenrick) are rejecting this on the basis that the tax payer shouldn’t foot the bill. We’re talking sums amounting to up to £100k being charged to people who paid similar amounts for their apartments in the first place! One affected block was built since Grenfell, so the entire ownership could effectively be in massive negative equity. The government have put together a fund of £1bn for non-ACM cladding remediation, expecting that to cover ~600 buildings, but already over 2,700 buildings have applied and the estimated cost UK-wide is upwards of £15bn. The whole thing is an utter shambles and people are stuck unable to sell their properties (stalling the first time buyer market as they can’t move up to other properties, and meaning they cannot move for work in a time when there are masses of redundancies) or even remortgage!

lmm 6y ago
> The House of Lords has proposed an amendment to the bill stating that leaseholders won’t be made to pay (note: not forcing the tax payer to pay, just ensuring the leaseholders don’t) and the Housing Committee (namely MP Robert Jenrick) are rejecting this on the basis that the tax payer shouldn’t foot the bill. How does the amendment ensure leaseholders don't have to pay without putting taxholders on the hook? You can't make money from nowhere.
- dijksterhuis 6y ago
  In a Venn diagram, "not leaseholders" will be all other space on the diagram. I imagine it's meant to leave all other options on the table (taxpayers, developers and/or anyone else) rather than force a specific choice (except leaseholders).

flybrand 6y ago

Safety is a commons; we have a tragedy of the commons. Capitalism willfully ignores safety when not punished.

dsego 6y ago
More and more lately I have the feeling that things won't improve unless heads start rolling. And I mean literally as in people getting beheaded, not figuratively.

csours 6y ago

I've listened to about half of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry Podcast [0], as well as read and heard about it a few other places. I'm not an expert in anything related to this. My comments here are related to what I feel I've learned from this; I'm leaving aside legal/punishment questions. One thing I wish this article called out: Grenfell was not unique. About 400 other high-rise buildings have been or are being remediated for having some combination of the cladding and insulation used at Grenfell. Some of the testimony is absolutely sickening and despicable - the insulation manufacturers coming up with a 'clever' way to lie about the fire rating of their material, and a few other things. But mostly the testimony reminded me of how complicated the world is, and how little we know about our own jobs. (Perhaps this is more unique to me, but I suspect not). The architects felt like they were only specifying a design and the 'look and feel' of materials. The fire safety specialists concentrated their comments on egress and smoke extraction systems. The inspectors concentrated on external appearance. And so on, and so on. Everybody felt like they were just doing their job. Work and real life are complicated, and there are always time and budget pressures, so people just don't have the time and attention to pick up on all the things that we notice after the fact. --- A few brief reflections: Beware of a culture of 'pencil-whipping' tests. If you raise a safety/security concern with your manager and they don't want to know about it, it's a very bad sign. If you have a safety/security concern raise it explicitly in email. Beware of rare events: it was clear from testimony that very few people involved in the project even imagined a large systemic fire risk, it wasn't on their radar. 0: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p066rd9t https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p066rd9t

dazc 6y ago
'Work and real life are complicated, and there are always time and budget pressures, so people just don't have the time and attention to pick up on all the things that we notice after the fact.' Local Authorities (such as responsible for the building here) used to employ a 'site agent' to oversee works in order to ensure it was done to proper standard. He/she would have industry experience and considerable authority. Such a person would be unlikely to turn a blind eye to bad practice. But this was seen as an unnecessary cost and contractors are now allowed to self-certify much of their own work. Even where it is a legal requirement for some aspects to be signed-off by another party (such as compliance with building regulations) this can also be contracted out to firms who rely upon the goodwill of contractors for continuity of work. This leads to obvious conflicts of interest and perverse incentives to certify work that isn't up to scratch.

hyko 6y ago

Absolutely awful, a disgrace to humanity. They burnt people alive to profit from their miserable little scam business. No matter how hard I squint, I just can’t make sense of their actions. This list is a terrifying glimpse of how the entire world would end up without effective regulation. People like this would glide to the top on a carpet of skeletons and we’d basically have to re-invent government to stop them.

monoclechris 6y ago
The local council should face criminal consequences for these decisions.

jaco8 6y ago

It basically is a fraud with the leaseholder the victim. The system has failed. The government issued occupational permits. The fire services signed their ok. The cladding companies used false reports to get approval. The construction companies made a mess. The solicitors approved the title deeds for signing without checking realities. Now everything is false and needs to be renewed with costs beyond belief. The leaseholder is the consumer and must be protected by consumer protection law and also will need to be compensated for any loss. The government will need to foot the bill and then can claw the costs back from their own departments,cladding and construction companies as well as other parties who failed the leaseholder. The waking watch is another fraud forced upon leaseholders. Two guys walking about with their smartphones playing games or sitting somewhere catching up on study books will not cut it. The freeholder getting kickbacks from the building insurance company , which is saying that anything can be insured at a price , is also laughing on the way to the bank.