Flammable cladding

carmanmemoranda said:
That's a little different isn't it. And no doubt you will have been asked to specify what you are fitting, so you have a direct responsibility for that action.

Why haven't the people that specified this stuff had that same level of responsibility applied
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If working on site I would not have specified what boiler I fit. However I would make those responsible aware if I had any issues.

I was a pest.
 
At a meeting with senior management at our council after grenfell they were asked if the cladding on buildings was safe as tenants were asking and quite concerned .
They turned round and said yes been tested and perfectly safe .
Well are you going to press release or letter drop the tenants .
No because they will think we are lying so we are saying nothing .
70 people standing there looking at each other shaking their heads in disbelief thinking did we just hear them right
 
Is there a well-proven insulation material on the market that meets spec and doesn't burn?
 
Foamglas

not often used in the UK but imported to order

I think the European factory is in Belgium.
 
very handy for people who don't want their buildings to go up in flames.
 
The building regs specify all sorts of things and get changed from time to time. I have no idea if they spec a fire rating for insulation or if they do that it's a sensible one.

Nothing seems to have been done about plastic backed fridges and freezers.

The Towers - have the fire brigade changed their standard approach in buildings like this and others with similar problems?
 
ajohn said:
The building regs specify all sorts of things and get changed from time to time.
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Funny you should mention that. The problem of flammable cladding was repeatedly raised to Housing Ministers, who did nothing about it. One said he did not want the department to be diverted from its important bureaucracy by making changes.

Only after 70 were roasted alive in Grenfell did public anger force them to pay attention.

"
The state failure to prepare for tower block fires goes back decades. Fires in Merseyside and Scotland in the 1990s provided stark warnings, and unpublished tests commissioned under New Labour showed how poorly the cladding used on Grenfell performed in a fire.

However, perhaps the most crucial moment in the narrative being pieced together by the inquiry is the Lakanal House fire in 2009, in Camberwell, south London, which killed six people. This should have been a turning point for setting out clear and comprehensive regulations. In 2013, the coroner investigating the fire made a number of recommendations to the government. Ministers were advised to review a document called Approved Document B, which provides guidance on the fire safety part of the building regulations.


Pickles, the housing secretary at the time, agreed to a review, but set a deadline of 2016-17. In reality, the review had barely started by the date of the Grenfell fire in 2017.

This delay proved fateful. Since Grenfell, ministers have insisted that the building regulations did not allow for combustible cladding to be installed on high-rise buildings, shifting the blame to industry. However, confusion over Approved Document B led many in industry to believe this type of cladding was permitted. More than 480 high rises in England have now been found to contain the same type of cladding as Grenfell Tower, while many more contain other dangerous claddings.

One stark example includes an email sent from a cladding manufacturer to the civil servant responsible for Approved Document B, that warned “confusion and misunderstanding” over the building regulations was leading to a situation of “grave concern” and called for clearer guidance to be issued. Meanwhile, successive ministers between 2014 and 2017 were sent more than 21 letters from a group of MPs, led by the late David Amess, that warned a review of the guidance must be carried out urgently before another deadly fire occurs.

Given these warnings, the government still dragged its feet on reviewing Approved Document B. The civil servants with responsibility for the building regulations certainly have a lot to answer for. Much more should have been done to raise the alarm.

However, the failures of officials must be understood within the context of the deregulation agenda of the time. In January 2012, Cameron announced that his “new year resolution” was to “kill off the health and safety culture for good”. “We need to realise, collectively, that we cannot eliminate risk and that some accidents are inevitable,” he wrote in the Evening Standard in April of that year.

He tasked the civil service with a “one in, one out” rule for departments wishing to introduce new regulations. This was toughened to “one in, two out” in January 2013 and “one in, three out” in 2016."

Cameron wanted "a bonfire of regulation."

He got a bonfire all right.


www.theguardian.com

Ex-ministers could have shown humility and regret at the Grenfell inquiry. They didn’t | Lucie Heath

Despite weeks of evidence about safety deregulation, those who were in charge seem convinced they are above reproach, says Inside Housing’s Lucie Heath
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
www.insidehousing.co.uk

The prime minister Theresa May's chief of staff Gavin Barwell did not act on multiple warnings about fire safety in months before Grenfell, new letters show

A trusted source of up-to-date news for social housing professionals – the only place to get comprehensive coverage of all the big topics.
www.insidehousing.co.uk www.insidehousing.co.uk

"Gavin Barwell, who was housing minister in 2016 and 2017, received seven letters from the group of MPs responsible for scrutinising fire safety rules between September 2016 and May 2017 – with the last landing just 26 days before the fire at Grenfell Tower.

The letters warned of the risk of a deadly fire and called for a promised review of building regulations and fire safety to be carried out to prevent it.

But Mr Barwell sent just three short replies during this period and became so bad at replying that the group resorted to sending their letters by recorded delivery."
 
Architects do the actual designs and meet specifications many of which are not set by them.
 
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