Hello John:

I have been waiting years for this report to be issued.

I plan to download the full report to see it it answers all my questions- for example why there was no water in the risers or why it took so long to turn off the gas supply to the building.

Now it has been issued, how long before the police start arresting people?

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay Florida 

Now it has been issued, how long before the police start arresting people?

For ever I should think, or at most it will be some poor sap who attached some panels who was a long way from the original flawed decision making,

To decide someone's individual action is criminal, rather than just stupid, and stands any chance of being convicted as such before a Jury is actually quite a high bar to satisfy when there are so many folk - if you like, the blame is spread thinly.

Mike.

mapj1 said:

To decide someone's individual action is criminal, rather than just stupid, and stands any chance of being convicted as such before a Jury is actually quite a high bar to satisfy when there are so many folk - if you like, the blame is spread thinly.

Quite so! The Swiss cheese model applies. There must have been many similar buildings, and some which still exist.

I think that it is the scale of the tragedy which was exceptional. Had there been, say 24 families of 3 who had been killed over a period, would anybody have noticed?

As I understand it the Attorney General has given an undertaking to persons giving oral evidence, not written, to the Grenfell Inquiry that that evidence cannot be used in a prosecution. It does not give the persons immunity from prosecution but the oral evidence cannot be used to prosecute them.

That makes the task of the Met. Police much harder to bring the offenders to justice.

I look forward to those suspects getting the early morning wake up call from London's finest knocking on their door.

JP 

mapj1 said:

To decide someone's individual action is criminal, rather than just stupid, and stands any chance of being convicted as such before a Jury is actually quite a high bar to satisfy when there are so many folk - if you like, the blame is spread thinly.

Whilst I agree, potentially, with the potential for  'spread thinly' I would point out that, if prosecutions could be brought under CDM Regulations, there is no differentiator between 'stupid' or 'criminal'. If this were a workplace, that would be very easy because a designer has to ensure the safety of persons in a workplace, full stop.

However, with it being dwellings, things might be more complicated ... the question is, why is (or was) legislation different in this regard ? Are private individuals in their own home less valued than people in a workplace?

At this point, sadly I'm no legal professional ... but I'm sure there's an explanation.

mapj1 said:

To decide someone's individual action is criminal, rather than just stupid, and stands any chance of being convicted as such before a Jury is actually quite a high bar to satisfy when there are so many folk - if you like, the blame is spread thinly.

Whilst I agree, potentially, with the potential for  'spread thinly' I would point out that, if prosecutions could be brought under CDM Regulations, there is no differentiator between 'stupid' or 'criminal'. If this were a workplace, that would be very easy because a designer has to ensure the safety of persons in a workplace, full stop.

However, with it being dwellings, things might be more complicated ... the question is, why is (or was) legislation different in this regard ? Are private individuals in their own home less valued than people in a workplace?

At this point, sadly I'm no legal professional ... but I'm sure there's an explanation.

I fear it wont  be so clear cut. I appreciate the distress of the bereaved drives a desire that 'someone must pay for this' but (and by all means call me cynical) I think nearly everyone in the chain will be able to say, quite sensibly, that they personally took reasonable steps given the limits of their role and responsibility - firemen trained on similar buildings, stay put worked before, and probably were not told that cladding would affect things as much as it did. Builders did as they were told, councillors consulted policy documents, architects looked at maker's data sheets etc.
But of course no-one actually 'did' anything practical.  Actually the cheapest garden bonfire test with a bit of the cladding shows the issue - but was never the job of any of the huge no of desk pilots in the chain of decision to set fire to a small piece in the  office waste paper bin. In fact if they did they'd probably be fired, so they didn't.
Such R and D lab behaviour is not encouraged !

What is needed is not more layers of folk subcontracting and charging a fee but a shorter chain of responsibility, and the ability to do, nay demand,  practical tests of unknown combinations of materials.
I'm not holding my breath....
Mike

I disagree Mike

Read the commentary on the tests performed by the BRE on the cladding materials and the reports view of the BRE due diligence and how the manufactures influenced the tests and their marketing material.  The response of one manufacturers manager to being told the test of the materials had failed and what she wrote in the margin of an email. She was asked in her evidence what the meaning of WTF in cross examination.

So need for bonfire tests as the BRE were tasked to perform the tests.

JP

Are private individuals in their own home less valued than people in a workplace?

I suspect it's more to do with homeowners are typically voters, and voter's don't tend not to vote for people who try to tell them what to do in their own home (and with their own money).  So things like safety improvements tend not to be retrospective for owner occupiers, but at best get slipped in during new work. In a workplace, it's (mostly) not the voter that pays (lots of voter workers who benefit, only one voting boss that pays) so it tends to be easier to force through costly changes. Rented homes are a bit in the middle - while it may look like the landlord pays, costs inevitable end up being added to the rent.

   - Andy.

She was asked in her evidence what the meaning of WTF in cross examination.

and it is just that sort of ignorance, among the bureaucratic class, of these sort of specialist techniques and terminology, that allows this sort of issue to occur. I'm pretty sure everyone in the lab where I work knows what it means. (!)

But dark humour aside, that incident specifically - the testing of Celotex in the wrong layer stack (with an Mg O barrier) compared to how it was actually being used (without that non-combustible barrier) may be one of the closest we see to at least corporate responsibility.
It does look like pretty solidly like tricking the test sample to get a pass which would otherwise be a fail. And would not happen if it was not the company itself preparing the test sample and results and test method being seen as "commercial in confidence" information.
I still fear though that even if anyone gets fined or jailed, even for that, it will not be those truly responsible for making it happen.
Mike

Hello John:

I see in today's Housing magazine (Monday 9th September 2024) that the Lords call for the Building Research Establishment (BRE) be stripped of it's responsibility for certifying modern methods of Construction.

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay 

It might be more sense to not make it financially dependant on customers - in the same way that the courts are not paid by the fines they levy...
Mike.

Hello Mike:

With any "independent" (if there is any such thing) service provider, funding of the operation is always a problem.

Even if that service is provided by the government - it is never fully funded to the required level.

For an example the approval of new drugs in the US by the FDA.

By the way, on an unrelated item, I saw last week that the UKCA mark has been killed.

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay FL 

Peter Brooks said:

I saw last week that the UKCA mark has been killed

Not quite (at least as far as I'm aware), the change is that the CE Mark can still be used in the UK - so manufacturers can use either (or both!) 

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/using-the-ukca-marking#rules-for-using-the-ukca-image

Not that I can imagine many manufacturers bothering to use the UKCA mark, I certainly wouldn't advise any to now as it adds no value, but the intention is that it could be used for any future UK specific standards

I am not sure what people don't understand about Grenfell.  It was a building made out of rocks/brick/cement.  Those materials do not burn or catch fire.  Then people decided to wrap it in a highly flammable petro-chemical based material and a fire broke out somewhere and spread rapidly.  Lot of people died in this awful incident/Tragady

The people that decided that material was ok to use are to blame.  They need a custodial sentence

The people selling/distributing the material as Fire Safe.  They need a custodial sentence

The people that decided that material was ok to use are to blame.  They need a custodial sentence

The people selling/distributing the material as Fire Safe.  They need a custodial sentence

And I agree anyone who has O level chemistry or indeed just set fire to a polyethylene bag should have realized the scope for a fire problem.

Actually  there is a similar issue when you replace 'crittal' steel framed windows with uPVC the glass falls out when hot in a way that neither metal nor wooden frame used to- but homes up and down the land are happy with that, as the risk of fire in a normal house is low. It is not clear that the same sort of windows are such a good idea when panes of glass fall from many stories up.

The grasp of basic chemistry among the general public, including those employed by councils and cladding companies, it appears is pretty minimal and folk do not see it as a serious inadequacy not to understand the world about them, encouraged perhaps  by popular quiz shows when 'science' questions are seen as harder than 'football' ones.

Mike.