Grenfell Tower was wrapped in flammable material because the team behind its refurbishment hoped to win an award for eco-friendly designs, an inquiry heard yesterday.
A lawyer for the survivors and bereaved families of the tragedy claimed an “overfocus of sustainability” led “very directly” to the installation of combustible insulation on the block.
It had been considered desirable by officials in charge of the botched refit as it was “more thermally efficient” than non-combustible alternatives, she told a hearing.
The public inquiry into the inferno which killed 72 people in 2017 is currently investigating how and why a deadly combination of flammable materials ended up encasing the building.
Stephanie Barwise QC said the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC), the owners of the block, and the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (TMO), which maintained it, hoped to “offset the cost” of the refurbishment by securing funding from the Government’s energy efficiency scheme.
This desire, she said, was reflected in the design team’s ambition to win an award presented annually for the most “innovatively sustainable” buildings, known as a BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method).
The aim was subsequently built into both the pre-construction and the design-and-build agreement with Rydon, the contractor in charge of the refurbishment project.
Ms Barwise told the hearing: “Given the current environment imperative, the drive to reduce carbon emissions was laudable, but it is perhaps an opportune moment to reflect on the fact that at Grenfell, at least, that drive very directly led, with much encouragement from the insulation manufacturer, Celotex, to the use of combustible insulation behind the rainscreen cladding which fuelled the inferno which ensued.
“The use of combustible insulation resulted in fires of much higher temperatures than they otherwise would be – and so it was at Grenfell.”
The designers, she said, were so keen to win the award, they tried to not only meet the thermal efficiency requirements in the building regulations, but actually exceed them.
Achieving this target would require a “large volume of non-combustible insulation”, but the Celotex insulation eventually chosen was said to be more thermally efficient and “therefore requiring less volume”.
Meanwhile, Celotex, the manufacturer of the combustible RS5000 insulation, had been pursuing an “aggressive” marketing strategy in targeting the Grenfell Tower refurbishment as a “must win” project, Ms Barwise said.
This was despite the firm being “very well aware” the product’s flammable properties meant it would not be allowed on buildings taller than 18 metres, she claimed.
“Yet the importance of fire safety appears to have been overlooked,” she told the hearing.
The lawyer said the pursuit of sustainability across the country was coming “at the expense of fire safety”, as she urged Sir Martin Moore-Bick, the inquiry chairman, to address what she described as a “conflict” between two key areas of the building regulations.
The TMO has previously said the decision to apply thermal insulation to the outside of the existing concrete walls “was a good one”, adding in its written submissions that it had “no technical qualification, ability or knowledge of either the materials used in cladding insulation, nor how they were affixed to the tower”.
RBKC, by contrast, apologised “unreservedly” for the failure of its building control officials to notice the insulation selected for the refurbishment was combustible and, under the building regulations, not allowed for use on towers such as Grenfell.
The revelations came on a day of powerful opening statements from lawyers representing those touched by the tragedy.
Sam Stein QC, representing one group of bereaved and survivors, said the companies behind the refurbishment “killed those 72 people as sure as if they had taken careful aim with a gun and pulled the trigger”.
Hitting out at the manufacturers of the flammable building materials, he told the hearing: “Those companies responsible killed when they criminally failed to consider the safety of others. “They killed when the promoted their unsuitable, dangerous products in pursuit of money and a place within the market and they killed when they entirely ignored their ultimate clients – the people of Grenfell Tower.”
The inquiry continues.
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