IT WAS a week in which Wales went ‘locked’, Boris shut Manchester, Sturgeon beat Boris, and Jenrick went ‘generous’.
During all the national hullabaloo, mainstream media has all but ignored the revelations that have continued each week in the Grenfell Tower inquiry. Now in its second phase, last week was the 15th week of hearings about the 2017 fire in a refurbished west London tower block where 72 tenants died.
The Grenfell Inquiry
The day after the fire, Theresa May — as PM —announced that a public inquiry would take place and it was formally set up within two months. The first phase covered the events of the night of the fire and its report was published on October 30, 2019.
The second phase examines the causes of those events and it commenced on January 27, 2020 with hearings during three of the weeks in the run up to the coronavirus lockdown.
Hearings resumed in the first full week of July and are now likely to continue well into 2022.
Both the hearings and the evidence are all public, with videos as well as full transcripts being made available on the Grenfell Inquiry website www.grenfelltowerinquiry.org.uk/hearings.
Found and Lost
The week started with a surprise as the Inquiry heard that Peter Maddison, the director of assets and regeneration at RBKC’s (Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea) Tenant Management Organisation Ltd (TMO), had admitted to Kennedy’s (the TMO’s solicitors) that he’d kept eight daybooks and five diaries at home — spanning the period from 23 January 2013 to 10 May 2017.
According the Inquiry’s lead barrister “both Kennedys and Mr Maddison are going to have to give clear and convincing explanations of why these documents were not disclosed to the inquiry nor, so far as we can tell, to the Metropolitan Police, until now”.
Things got worse when one of the TMO’s project managers for the regeneration, Claire Williams, was being asked by the lead barrister if she’d handed over all of the notebooks, diaries and records that she’d kept.
The reply came back that she’d binned all except the last one, covering “probably 2017/ 2018”.
Complicated
By Wednesday, Peter Maddison was being reminded of the events of a 2009 fire at Lakanal House, a 14-storey tower block in Southwark, where six people had died.
Having indicated his knowledge of the fire, the consequences and the investigating coroner’s recommendations that sprinklers be retro-fitted to high-rise residential buildings, Mr Maddison was then questioned as to including sprinklers in the Grenfell Tower refurbishment.
Reading the transcript, it shows Mr Maddison describing the the retro-fitting as “a very complicated issue that hadn’t been given full consideration”.
When later challenged by the lead barrister that they weren’t fitted because there wasn’t a legal requirement to do so, Mr Maddison responded by saying “Erm … I think there’s a — I think there’s — that’s a fair enough thing to say, but I think it was probably more complicated than that.”
Why this matters
Engineering and Management daybooks, especially hard bound ones, are admissible in many courts and inquiries as evidence in the event that anything goes wrong. Withholding them, destroying them or throwing them away is tantamount to tampering with evidence.
As to sprinklers, despite the Lakanal House deaths; despite the Coroner’s recommendations; the MHCLG (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government) did not make the retro-fitting of sprinklers law and the TMO — the arms-length company acting on behalf of the RBKC Council — did not include sprinklers in Grenfell Tower’s refurbishment.
The last word
This phase of the Inquiry includes the bidding process, the prime contractor, materials suppliers, subcontractors and various consultancies and consultants. It would be an understatement to say that what’s been uncovered so far is tantamount to a shameful indictment of their working practices.
If you’d like to find out more about the causes of the events, there’s a really excellent weekly digest from Peter Apps, the award-winning deputy editor of the trade magazine Inside Housing or, if you’ve the time for a longer more detailed read, there’s always the inquiry’s daily transcripts themselves.
They speak volumes, on behalf of tenants who can no longer speak at all.
