What We Found
‘Something’s Fundamentally Wrong’
Grenfell exposed a broken system of building safety, where lax construction regulation let developers “race to the bottom,” according to a government-ordered review conducted after the disaster.
Prime Minister May held up the government’s response to Grenfell in her resignation speech last week as one of the biggest achievements of her tenure.
But many others saw it differently, with a firefighters’ union calling it “disgraceful” that Mrs. May celebrated efforts that have left lax building rules untouched and tens of thousands of people in danger.
The recommendations of the regulatory review, presented to Parliament a year ago, disappointed many safety experts who had seen it as a golden opportunity for an overhaul.
It did not recommend that fire sprinklers be installed on existing high-rises or on new buildings below 10 stories. It did not ask for a new mandate on second staircases for escaping blazes, which remain optional in many cases, too. And the government’s ban on Grenfell-style cladding applies only to buildings above 18 meters, or about six stories.
For many fire safety experts, those were head-spinning decisions, signaling an inability — or unwillingness — to reshape the regulatory landscape to prioritize safety over cost.
“The government’s primary objective has always been to avoid the blame for Grenfell,” said Jonathan Evans, the chief executive of Ash and Lacy, a cladding systems maker. Writing strict new rules, he said, would have been an admission the old ones had allowed Grenfell-style cladding to proliferate.
The government said it was still considering tougher rules about fire sprinklers and evacuation staircases, and that it had focused on buildings above six stories because firefighting becomes riskier at those heights.
“There is nothing more important than making sure people are safe in their homes, and that’s why the government is committed to improving building safety,” a Housing Ministry spokesman said.
Other measures recommended in the report, like harsher penalties and a new regulatory body with greater oversight powers, have won plaudits, but require parliamentary action that has yet to happen.
Safety experts said they were especially concerned about how little has been done since Grenfell to protect the disabled and elderly, who cannot easily escape burning buildings.
“It’s only a matter of time before we’ll get a vulnerable group that will die in large numbers,” said Jonathan O’Neill, the managing director of the Fire Protection Association, Britain’s national fire safety organization. “I’m absolutely convinced about it.”
The Takeaway: Someone always pays for building on the cheap.
Additional sources not cited in the article: Susan Bright, professor of land law at Oxford University; Stuart Hodkinson, associate professor in critical urban geography at University of Leeds; Alistair Murray, director and leader of fire engineering team at Arup; Giles Peaker, housing lawyer and partner at Anthony Gold Solicitors; Guillermo Rein, professor of fire science at Imperial College London; Ritu Saha, co-founder of U.K. Cladding Action Group; Arnold Tarling, chartered surveyor at BETA – Chartered Surveyors Ltd.
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