Public Inquiry into the facts and causes of the Grenfell Tower fire, exposing the interconnected webs of denial operating within and around the construction industry
Context
The second half of the 20th century saw a rapid period of residential building in the UK, including the clearance of so-called slums—mainly working class neighbourhoods of low-rise terraced housing—and their replacement with high-rise, modern apartment buildings. Many of these buildings were built using new construction methods, and at great speed, leading in many cases to serious faults, and in some cases even to collapse. After the oil crisis and with growing awareness of the limits to energy use, these buildings were being repaired and upgraded, often with external insulation and cladding systems, as well as double glazing. However, due to deregulation and privatisation agendas of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government, standards of building and consequentially of living became a question of the market.
The consequences of deregulation and the associated abrogation of responsibility by policy makers and the construction industry came home most horrifically on the morning of 14 June 2017, when fire spread rapidly through the external cladding installed during the recent refurbishment of Grenfell Tower in North Kensington, West London, killing 72 people. Despite the fire service’s immediate description of the fires as “completely unprecedented”, there had in fact been a number of almost identical, but less deadly, fires in residential buildings in previous years, including one that killed three adults, two children, and a new-born baby at Lakanal House in Southwark in 2009.
Practice
The Grenfell Tower Inquiry, commissioned by the UK Prime Minister on the day after the fire, put into the spotlight not only issues around materials and regulations, but also of the disempowerment of residents in relation to their own housing. The Inquiry was split into two phases: the first to establish a definitive narrative of events on the night of the fire; and the second, much longer stage, to examine the causes.
“Each and every one of the deaths that occurred in Grenfell Tower, on the 14 June 2017 was avoidable.”
The Inquiry’s terms of reference were sufficiently broad so that it was able to consider not just the immediate procedural and technical failures surrounding the fire, but wider issues around building regulations and enforcement, testing and certification, as well as the ways in which the building was managed, and residents’ complaints were dealt with. It lays bare the infrastructures of ignorance and denial that support the construction sector, allowing the continuation of deleterious practices and the sale of hazardous materials. It also brings to fore the ways in which those involved seek to avoid accountability, passing blame, and ignoring consequences. The Inquiry clearly showed how a culture of denial, hubris, and willingness to take chances with people’s lives is endemic within the construction sector.
The Inquiry showed the extent to which the government is in hock to construction industry lobbyists. One internal document authored by insulation manufacturers Kingspan noted that the government would not introduce new regulations “until the industry was ready for it”. As Peter Apps’ seminal book on the disaster repeatedly shows, inquiries and commissions have made recommendations in the past—many in relation to the exact same materials—that have been ignored again and again by the government. The only admission of guilt at any stage was by the department of housing, recognising the insufficiency of safety regulations and their role in maintaining weak protocols.
Beyond the regulatory failings, and perhaps most significantly, the Inquiry shows how the fire was a cause of much more than technical and regulatory failures (ignoring consequences): it was the result of ignoring people, and of the demonisation of social housing residents. In the wake of the fire, the group Grenfell United was formed to give a voice to survivors and bereaved relatives, and to support the work of existing community groups in building community action to resist the siloing of power.
What the tragedy of Grenfell shows most clearly is how an act notionally addressing the mitigation of climate breakdown—the insulation of housing—is bound into a complex net of political ideology, extractivist profiteering, commercial crime, and social injustice. This indicates how climate breakdown can never be addressed through one lens alone, but needs to take into account the intersection of multiple issues and forces.
“Grenfell is a lens through which to see how we are governed.”