“Serious concerns” about the firm that tested cladding on Grenfell tower were raised by a review body five years before the fatal blaze.
And a senior civil servant warned “there is going to be a major fire” three years prior to the fire that claimed the lives of 72 people.
The inquiry into the Grenfell tragedy was told about the warnings during two days of hearings this week.
A series of reports were shown to the inquiry that criticised the firm that carried out tests on the building products used on the London block.
The United Kingdom Accreditation Services (UKAS) – a government body which provides certification and inspection services – uncovered “areas of weakness” in the British Research Establishment (BRE).
A report from 2012 – five years before the fire – concluded there was “serious concerns” about some aspects of management control at BRE.
UKAS reported the following year that in most of the company’s test centres, there had been no witnessed test audits in the preceding year. It also said most of the few test audits that had been planned were carried out without the quality manager’s knowledge and had not been reported to him.
The hearing was told another report in 2014 from UKAS had found BRE was making a “good effort” to catch up with audits, but this had slipped back in 2015.
Counsel to the inquiry Emma Hynes QC asked UKAS accreditation director Lorraine Turner if the report signified a “quite serious situation”. Turner replied: “Potentially, yes.”
Meanwhile, the inquiry heard that senior civil servant Brian Martin warned there would be a “major fire” when leaving a cladding industry meeting three years before Grenfell.
He is said to have made the comment when he left a meeting of the Centre for Window and Cladding Technology (CWCT) in 2014. The meeting was called to discuss concerns over fire safety regulations in the UK’s building industry.
Mr Martin was in attendance as he was the official in charge of fire safety building regulations at what was the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government.
David Cookson, who was also in attendance as product manager at Kingspan, said in a witness statement to the inquiry: “One thing that does stand out in my mind for the CWCT meeting is that when Brian Martin left the room he said something along the lines of, ‘there is going to be a major fire’.”
He added that the comment was related to the quality of cavity barriers rather than simply the cladding.
The inquiry continues.
