While acknowledging the importance of the Grenfell Inquiry recommendations published in September, a panel of experts made clear that changes in culture and a sense of responsibility were required, in order to reduce the chances of similar tragedies in the future.
Speaking on the first day of the Anticipate London event at Excel, the panellists considered the findings of the inquiry’s report. Asked what they each thought was the most important recommendation, Adrian Mansbridge, a building and fire safety lawyer at Addleshaw Goddard, said it is the proposal on the production and marketing of construction products. “That’s the most significant change. It hasn’t happened yet, but it’s overdue.”
The panel speaking at Anticipate London.
Steve McGuirk, a former chief fire officer and now representing the Fire Sector Federation, said he would struggle to identify a single recommendation or set of recommendations. There was so much complexity and fragmentation at the heart of Grenfell that it is difficult to isolate a single feature. Delivering fire safety solutions depends on people applying their professional judgement in each case taking into account the complexity of the fire challenge – the building, its contents and how it’s fitted out and who occupies it and how. Regulation can only take things so far – and those reactive steps to the fire and its aftermath have complicated things even more.
Gill Kernick, a former resident of Grenfell Tower before the fire and a systems specialist at Arup said the most important recommendation to come out of the report was the one concerning the publication and progress tracking of all recommendations made by inquests and public inquiries. The recommendation she felt should have gone much further was on residents’ powers to address the power deficit on the part of residents living in such buildings. She described the circumstances around the Grenfell Tower fire as a “system failure”, which she defined as failure at the systemic level rather than piecemeal issues such as cladding.
Steve McGuirk broadly agreed with this, but said the problem was quantifying what is the “fire sector” or “fire industry”. In a fire chain model devised by the Fire Sector Federation, there were at least 340 different organisations qualifying to belong in that space. He described it as a “complex and adaptive system that self-organises”, which regulation cannot keep up with, a bit like issues such as vaping and AI. “We have to accept the ambiguity of the network.”
Small failures, massive consequences
In response to whether it was individual organisations or the system in which they existed that were to blame for tragedies such as Grenfell, Adrian Mansbridge said that relatively small individual failures in themselves led to massive consequences when brought together. It will therefore be a challenge to bring criminal proceedings against individuals or companies. But Gill Kernick disagreed, saying individuals could not be exonerated by blaming the system, because those individuals are part of the system.
Steve McGuirk said the problem is visibility – the more complex the structure is, the fuzzier it becomes. Although every actor is part of it and should be held accountable, without clarity of the architecture it’s very difficult to pin the blame.
Chairing the discussion, Paul Stollard, Chair of the Institution of Fire Engineers, reminded the panel about the lack of response by ministers at the time to the recommendations of the Lakanal House fire inquest judge. With around 58 recommendations from the Grenfell Tower inquiry, how long should it take to implement those?
The government needs to work out how many recommendations have been implemented and how many are still outstanding, said Adrian Mansbridge. Although primary legislation takes time to be drawn up and implemented, we are bad at implementing recommendations of public inquiries and politicians are good at kicking them into the long grass, by which time they are out of the public eye and beyond institutional memory.
Credit: Tommy London/Alamy Stock Photo
Although at the time of publication of the Grenfell final report, the prime minister said the government would not fully respond to the recommendations for six months, Gill Kernick said she had no issue with this timescale, as long as the recommendations were given proper consideration. But the real question is: How are existing buildings and new buildings going to be safe?
Professional curiosity
Steve McGuirk said if people considered themselves professionals, then they ought to take pride in their professionalism by continually improving on what they do. People at a high level are paid to have intellectual curiosity and demonstrate leadership. Nevertheless, he is seeing evidence of organisations coming together and thinking collaboratively.
The Higher Risk Building regime has been fundamentally good, but its implementation has been very poor, said Adrian Mansbridge. But he is not entirely unsympathetic to the regulator, as there is a massive deficit of skills at present.
Gill Kernick concluded by saying the industry has to restore trust with the public – the systematic dishonesty and incompetence in the industry is shocking. The industry should realise that it needs to do this because it has failed. The recommendations of the Grenfell Tower inquiry don’t just apply to the 72 people who died in the fire, but to hundreds of thousands who live in fear and at risk in such buildings.
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In response to whether it was individual organisations or the system in which they existed that were to blame for tragedies such as Grenfell, Adrian Mansbridge said that relatively small individual failures in themselves led to massive consequences when brought together. It will therefore be a challenge to bring criminal proceedings against individuals or companies. But Gill Kernick disagreed, saying individuals could not be exonerated by blaming the system, because those individuals are part of the system.
