The Great Tower Block Fire Tragedy of London

[villa4europe]

2 hours ago, snowychap said:

Thanks again for taking the time to post all of this.

Reading back through this and the previous post, am I getting it wrong when I infer from what you've said about ' who did those things you ask? everyone ' that it is, in effect, a process mainly of self-monitoring and self-regulation of whether the people in the building process follow the instructions as laid down by the architect and other things generally viewed as 'good building practice'?

It's a gray area because the specification of materials isn't necessarily good building practice 

in terms of the Fire the architect has to produce a fire strategy drawing, which CDM and building control both monitor, that takes in to consideration the number of people, the space, the distance between escape routes (in my mind it can't be more than 80m), it'll show the running men and statutory signage layout and then it'll show the compartments, usually a thick red line for 60 minute fire rating and I think a green line for 30, the only real details (as in drawing) the architect will do is the head of wall details and any large openings 

the builders responsibility comes in providing that line, they'll know if the specified doors will achieve it, that the glazing will usually need Georgian wire in it, that you have to batt all the openings to create a seal, the red line will usually wrap around the pipe boxing, they'll know that ply won't achieve it

Most contractors doing £8m projects will target ISO 9001 or have their own quality control system in place which should pick it up but as the conversation I had with a site manager today you cannot idiot proof the construction and trust me it's full of **** idiots, all it takes is one bloke who doesn't have fireliner on site or he's on floor 22 and it's down in the yard and he can't be bothered to go down, throw something in there and cover it up

the cladding is different, it's more of a trade that you depend on the experts rather than pretending to be one, most site managers will be brickies or chippies, I've met 1 who was a sparkie and a couple fresh from college, that's it from my experience, like I said the site guys will focus on the installation and the RAMS they won't take much notice of the product other than quality checks, the other difference with cladding is its commonplace that the architect will design elevation drawings and usually sections but it's more often that not what's know as a contractors design portion meaning that the subcontractor will design the details

i can tell you going forward I'd expect contractors to question materials more for a while before finding a way to push the risk far away from them, again a grey area without knowing ththe contract details, if it's an NEC contract which contains a risk register and identified something along the lines of "suitability of the specified materials" and then contractually identified that risk as the clients  (which I've seen before) then you'd have duty of care but the risk wouldn't be the contractors, they'd have to instruct you through the contract to change the material and pay you if necessary 

[snowychap]

1 hour ago, villa4europe said:

It's a gray area ...

Again, I really appreciate the time taken and the detailed response.

I've only just got in from the monthly pub quiz so I won't do your post justice if I try and take it all in now and respond so I'll have a proper butcher's tomorrow.

[chrisp65]

12 hours ago, villa4europe said:

ultimately IMO its the architect's PI that would be paying out, they specified the product, the client, the contractor, the subbie, even probably building control might not have the knowledge. certainly not the knowledge that you'd expect the architect to have, my project the architect specifies alucobond, we know the product, we know the approved installers, we know how long it'll take to get and where it'll come from, how to install it safely and using what equipment, our expertise and role in the project isnt really to go over the finer details of the product and say if its suitable, thats the architect

boxing around the pipes is different though, it probably wont have a detail drawing but should have a spec still, that works will more than likely come under builders work which is more of a grey area which is made up as you go along, if there was boxing of other pipes on site (soilent vent pipes etc) it would be acceptable to do it in ply (although you'd usually do it in MDF)

when we did some gas pipe work on the high rise in sandwell it was definitely fire liner board with then fire sealant gobbing up all the holes in the slab as it went through the floors

the ply used to box the gas pipe would IMO drag the contractor in to the blame, even if the architect had specified ply then they would know its not good building practice, it would more than likely have been done by a carpenter on site, building control should have spotted it too

like id said way back at the start of this thread though, the fireliner board and the fire batt gobbing up the riser etc that should have been there will only be designed to give an hours protection, after that the liner will burn

ive seen fire officers on site maybe 3 times, its usually for timber frame buildings that are in close proximity to other buildings and even then its a ball ache to get them there, they dont have time or arent interested 

 

hmmm, yes and no

It really does vary and you could well be right, but there are as many variations on process and responsibility as there are contracts.

If the material was certified for use in that situation and correctly detailed by the architect who took advice from industry experts, I wouldn't hold your breath on a PI pay out. The spec might not have named a product at all, it might have been a performance spec., so it could say on the drawing 'suitable cladding and insulation for x storey building to achieve a u value of ...' In which case it will be the contractors looking for the wriggle room.

Same with the detailing. It would be unusual for an architect to be inventing his own high rise cladding details. More likely they would have said to the cladding supplier 'give us your recommended fixing details'. I personally would never risk inventing a detail when the company that manufactured or marketed the product will do that element for free. If the architect effectively relied on the expert installer and wasn't the principal designer, his PI will be keeping the cheque book in the back pocket waiting for someone else to blink first. That's the 'beauty' of the design and build contract. We're currently the architects on a building where the main contractor has asked us to supply some pretty basic drawn details. Our response was 'd&b, draw your own detail, cheers'. Now, if that detail fails it isn't automatically the architects' problem if all he asked for was a wall and the builder built one that fell over.

Even the use of mdf as a liner is an absolute minefield of detail. It has to be FR rated, just saying mdf but knowing what you mean could lead to problems. I think I'm right in saying a couple of the supply places like Wickes don't even stock the fire rated versions (I could be doing them a dis service) Not least when the guys run out on site and send the man with the van out and he goes to the supplier and sees the price difference for the FR stuff... if they even stock the FR... What thickness? How are you detailing joints or fixing back to support structure? Is there any chance of it getting damp? If there is any chance of condensation or rain or water leeks getting to the mdf liner you might as well use weetabix instead. I've refused to sign off on mdf being used as a fire liner when a contractor forgot a corridor had to be 30 minute rated.The fixings were basically just tacks in to the existing shitty plasterboard.

It's going to be fascinating to see how the detail of this pans out (not just the newspaper precis headline of 'who was to blame').

 

[villa4europe]

@chrisp65 you're right, said in my other post id expect the architect to do elevations and then the subcontractor to provide details

like you say D&B and CDP muddies it further and it'll depend on the details of the architects novation

when i said about MDF i meant we use MDF to line general pipes, not fire rated, sanitaryware pipes etc we'll use the pink fireliner board for everything else

[peterms]

Interesting piece from Chris Cook here suggesting that industry bodies have been acting to weaken the framework of building regulations.  Another issue which the inquiry should look at.

Quote

Over the past week, the government has been testing high-rise tower blocks in England owned by councils and housing associations. All 95 of those tested so far have been discovered to be covered with an aluminium "rain-screen" exterior cladding that does not meet the required combustibility standards. You would be right to ask: how on earth can this have happened?

The short answer is: the organisations responsible for maintaining standards in the building industry have been advising contractors not to take the regulations too literally.

To understand this, it is worth starting with a document known as Approved Document B. This is the government's own set of fire safety guidance. It stipulates, at section 12.7, "in a building with a storey 18m or more above ground level any insulation product, filler material.... etc used in the external wall construction should be of limited combustibility".

That loose-sounding term - "limited combustibility" - actually has a precise definition, set out later in that document. Broadly, though, all you need to know it is hard to set alight. And material meeting this requirement in tests will get a combustibility grade of "A2" or better.

That is the standard against which the government has been testing cladding. A government spokesperson said "a test failure means that the cladding does not meet the requirements for limited combustibility in current Building Regulations". That is to say, a failure means a breach of the official rulebook.

Why, then, have builders installed so much sub-A2 cladding?

Undermining the building regulations

The first thing to know is that local officials no longer run all building inspections. England has a so-called "Approved Inspector" regime. Contractors must no longer wait for a local authority official to check their work. Instead, they may hire people to check their construction processes meet the required standards. There is no single regulator - or arm of government - directly upholding standards.

Second, the most important requirement in the building regulations is to build a safe building. So long as you do that, the fine print of the rules does not much matter too much. That is why, when inspectors sign off sites, they do not feel the need to work directly from the government's own guidelines. And the guidelines set out by government are rather old, and cannot specify everything in all circumstances.

That has left a gap into which esteemed sector bodies have stepped. Their umbrella organisation - the Building Control Alliance (BCA) - has issued advice about how to get a building signed off as compliant without using the type of materials specified in the government guidelines.

And it is the case that, in the event of some prosecutions or a civil case, breaching the government's guidance would count as a serious strike against a builder. But it would also be the case that following widely accepted professional practise and BCA guidance would also constitute a defence in a suit for negligence and grounds for mitigation in a criminal prosecution.

The problem is that this BCA guidance does not just suggest ways of making new technology fit the old rules. It introduces loopholes. The net effect of the sector bodies' guidance is to set weaker standards than the government's rulebook.

Routes to compliance

For example, the BCA's guidance in force when the Grenfell renovation took place was issued in July 2014, and it stated that there were several routes to getting a building ready for sign off by an inspector. "Option 1" was just to follow the Approved Document B route: just make sure everything you bolt to the outside of the building is of grade A2 or better.

There were other routes, though, to allow the use of sub-A2 components. Option 2 is to hold a bespoke fire test. So you rig up a wall in a test centre with your proposed cladding design - which might include some sub-A2 components - and try to set it on fire. If it passes the test, you can get certified so that inspectors will sign off this system, even if component parts on their own would not pass.

Option 3 is for a so-called "desktop study". If I have conducted tests of a cladding product in a few different scenarios, then I might not need to bother with a new fire test. I can convince inspectors to sign it off by hiring an expert who will say "based on these results, I am confident that this cladding is safe in this context" without doing any further trials.

There are problems with all of this: it has allowed substandard material through. It is a deeply opaque process. We do not know when desktop studies get used. We do not know how many attempts, for example, a product might take to pass a fire test. We do not know who writes these desktop studies. They are not lodged anywhere so that people living in these buildings can go and check on them.

A long way below A2

We reported last night, however, on a troubling fourth route. The National House Builders' Council (NHBC) is a big player in building inspection. Last year, they issued guidance which states that you can use a variety of sub-A2 insulation boards with B-grade external cladding - and you can do all of that without even a desktop study.

That effectively means that a sector body has unilaterally decided that largely using B-grade material is now sufficient, not A2. NHBC themselves state that "this is on the basis of NHBC having reviewed a significant quantity of data from a range of tests and desktop assessments."

NHBC also added that they were confident their own inspectors would have spotted and prevented the use of the plastic-core cladding that was used at Grenfell (with which they were not involved). But they have conceded there is at least one such polyethylene-core cladding product that meets the B-grade standard.

The NHBC also believes materials can be used more widely than their own manufacturers do. Take one of the insulation materials that the NHBC mention by name: Celotex RS 5000, the insulation used at Grenfell Tower. According to documents issued by the manufacturer, this board was only tested for use with A2-grade external cladding. The NHBC says it can be used with B-grade cladding,

We have also identified one type of insulation that, they say. can be used safely with B-grade cladding, which is actually grade C. All in all, the NHBC guidance takes us a long way from that official A2 standard. Although, as the official cladding tests results keep showing, they are hardly alone.

These test failures are a symptom of broader problems with standards in our building sector.

There has been a lot of discussion about sprinklers. But the catastrophe at Grenfell Tower has showed up the weakness of the whole framework in which our building regulations sit. The basis on which we decide whether a tower block is fire-safe is a mess.

Accepted professional practice has systematically reduced the fire resistance of our tall buildings.

 

[Demitri_C]

Click

Quote

 

Grenfell Tower: Residents confront minister over issues

Media captionMany Grenfell residents told the housing minister they wanted "actions before words"

Residents affected by the Grenfell Tower fire have vented their frustration at what they say is a lack of progress in dealing with problems.

They confronted housing minister Alok Sharma MP on why the homeless are not yet rehoused, in tense exchanges on the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme.

The minister told them people would be offered a suitable place to live within three weeks of the fire.

Later, the Prime Minister confirmed 120 tower blocks had now failed fire tests.

During the programme, residents and survivors set out their problems in the wake of the 14 June inferno.

Media captionGrenfell resident Oluwaseun Talabi tells minister: 'I want permanent accommodation'

"I am not moving my child from here, to here, to here, to here - I want permanent accommodation," Oluwaseun Talabi, who escaped the fire with his wife and young daughter, told Mr Sharma.

"I am not going to take any house you give me, it has to be suitable.

"I was happy in my house. I work hard. I want permanent accommodation,"

He and his family have been living in a hotel room after they "lost everything".

Read the full story here: Grenfell survivor, rebuilding his life

See clips from the show, here

Watch the full programme here

Mahad Egal, who escaped the fourth floor of Grenfell Tower during the fire in the early hours of 14 June, described how he had been offered alternative accommodation in a high rise block. He has refused it.

"My first priority is to put suitable accommodation over my children and my wife," he said.

"These people have the right to get back their dignity. Where is the dignity?" asked survivor Sid-Ali Atmani. "I don't want Theresa (May) to go to the TV, I want her to come (here)."

Haunted by victims

The group described the practical problems they have faced in being rehoused; trying to replace burned documents; accessing funding; being unable to return to work without a permanent base; and their dealings with the authorities.

They also spoke about the psychological impacts.

Many said they had not been able to sleep since the disaster, or were haunted by images of their escape and their friends, family and neighbours who perished.

Omar Alhajali, whose brother Mohammed died in the blaze, said: "When I see (his image), I remember everything. Not only now but every night... I can't sleep."

The group were hugely critical of the local council and the government's emergency response.

Kensington and Chelsea council provided no spokesperson for the programme's debate and they were empty-chaired.

Mr Sharma, the government's housing minister, arrived to answer their questions part-way through the show.

Survivors have themselves begun to compile a list of the victims as the current official number of people who died stands at 79, but it is expected to rise.

Media captionA woman who ran to help residents told the panel: "Check your moral compass"

They feel it will rise much further and are concerned the number is being downplayed.

Other residents have also voiced concerns - nearby blocks of flats and houses still lack hot water.

Simone Willis, a nurse who helped victims on the night, addressed a panel of politicians on the programme including the local MP Emma Dent Coad and London Assembly member Tony Devenish, saying: "When you're coming to these kinds of scenarios asking, 'what is needed?', think!

"You have a family, a mother, daughter, what would you need?

"This is not going to take a few shows, a few meetings, this is years of work."

Mr Sharma said the government guaranteed "people who have had their homes destroyed will be offered suitable accommodation within three weeks".

That timeframe leaves one week remaining. He initially said that would be "accommodation" and later said "temporary accommodation".

Everybody would have "good quality accommodation" he said, inviting them all to tell him their issues.

Olu feared he and his family would be killed in the fire

Exit player

Media captionOluwaseun Talabi talked about his survival as he revisited the tower, two weeks on

During the programme, residents raised the questions about the disaster they want to see answered by an inquiry.

They included:

How many people have died?

Why did the fire spread so quickly?

Will anyone be held to account?

Why were people told to stay put?

Will residents see the justice they want?

Afterwards, Mr Sharma said he was going straight to the Westway emergency relief centre to hold a surgery with survivors.

100% failure

At Prime Minister's Questions, Theresa May updated MPs on progress in dealing with the aftermath of the disaster.

She told MPs cladding on blocks across 37 local authority areas in England had failed tests for combustibility.

Given the "100% failure rate" she said local authorities had been told to get on with fire checks and any further necessary action.

She said 282 good quality temporary accommodation units had been identified, 132 families have had their needs assessed and 65 offers of accommodation had been made so far.

She said the lord chief justice would recommend a judge to head the public inquiry soon.

As of Wednesday morning, £1.25m had been paid to those affected and a further £1m would go to local charities and supporting groups, she said.

 

 

[snowychap]

@villa4europe, reading what you've detailed and @chrisp65's reply and the more detail from Chris Cook's report, it would appear that the process(es) are varied, sometimes (maybe often?) not clear even to those involved, and largely without sufficient oversight. Whilst this probably largely works fine (or at least doesn't have disastrous consequences), it does appear to explain how things can actually get lost in cracks along the way and that's before one considers the difficulty or impossibility of idiot-proofing construction or dealing with individuals on it who don't follow the actual policies and practices that would be expected.

As Chris posts, it should be interesting to see how the detail pans out though how long that takes is another question and whether it actually has any lasting effect shouldn't be taken for granted as I think you hinted at when you said:

19 hours ago, villa4europe said:

i can tell you going forward I'd expect contractors to question materials more for a while before finding a way to push the risk far away from them

 

[peterms]

The more we hear, the more it seems there is an extreme and systemic failure to provide basic protection.  Would anyone really agree to the outside of their home being clad in "polystyrene and plywood"?  here.

Quote

London Fire Brigade warned all 33 councils about the potential risks of external cladding on tower blocks in May this year, the BBC has learned.

It followed tests on panels from a high rise that suffered a fire last August.

The insulation panels were made up of polystyrene and plywood, and tests concluded they were the likely cause of the fire spreading up the outside.

The fire brigade urged councils to review their use and "take appropriate action to mitigate the fire risk".

External cladding has been identified as a potential factor in the rapid spread of the fire at Grenfell Tower, which is thought to have left at least 79 people dead.

It was also highlighted at the coroner's inquest into a fire at Lakanal House in Camberwell in 2009, which led to the deaths of six people, including three children.

The fire brigade's letter followed a blaze which broke out on the seventh floor of Shepherd's Court in Shepherd's Bush, west London, on the afternoon of 19 August 2016.

The cause was a faulty tumble dryer. The fire spread up six floors along the outside of the building. No-one was injured but some people suffered from smoke inhalation.

The BBC has seen documents relating to Shepherd's Court, including a report commissioned by the fire brigade, which highlighted the external panels attached to the windows of the 1970s tower block as a probable cause of the fire's spread on the outside of the building.

The report - first obtained by Inside Housing magazine - was compiled by fire specialists Bureau Veritas which tested the panels beneath the windows.

The fire experts found that panels withstood initial contact with fire but as it developed further, the polystyrene foam under the thin metal sheet began to melt. The metal sheet could then fall away exposing the foam and plywood beneath.

In its letter last May, following that report, the fire brigade urged councils to consider carefully the arrangements for specifying, monitoring and approving "all aspects of future replacement and improvement of building facades" including insulation panels and in-fill panels.

The letter also stated councils should ensure the works complied to building regulations "to secure public safety and minimise fire losses".

Councils were "strongly" urged to make sure information on all replacement windows and facades was made available to fire risk assessors, and to undertake mitigation measures to "ensure any potential fire spread does not pose a risk to health and safety".

Hammersmith and Fulham Council which owns Shepherd's Court is currently conducting further tests on the panels.
Image caption The LFB letter was sent to all 33 London councils

The BBC asked Kensington and Chelsea Council - the council responsible for Grenfell Tower - what action it took in response to the letter and received the following reply.

"The Council is committed to co-operating fully with both the public inquiry and the criminal investigation.

"We do not think it is right to make comments relevant to the inquiry or subject to the investigation until this issue has been discussed with the police and the solicitors to the public inquiry once they have been appointed."
Image caption Fire safety expert Prof Arnold Dix believes current risk assessments are totally inadequate

Meanwhile, two leading fire experts have described as "complete garbage" the current system for checking fire safety in buildings, and said it had failed to prevent tragedies including the Grenfell Tower and Lakanal House fires.

Prof Arnold Dix and Arnold Tarling said the fire risk assessment system was "atrocious" and "garbage."

Mr Tarling, who has repeatedly warned about tower block safety, said the assessments can be carried out by "inexperienced and unqualified people".

He said the responsibility for fire risk assessments had been taken from fire brigades in 2005 and turned into a self-certification exercise that could be carried out by anyone.

"I see garbage day in and day out on these reports. Some of them are not fit for burning. They're complete rubbish and people's lives are depending upon reports that are totally utterly worthless, that lead to a false sense of security.

"They're done by privately employed people or maybe in-house people and are required under the fire safety order.

"The parts of the building that they cover will be all the places where a workman would work or a postman would go, including staircases, landings and boiler rooms. It excludes everything inside the flat; it excludes the external walls."

Experts have also told the BBC the risk assessments do not take account of the outside of tower blocks, including cladding.

The Fire Brigades Union described the mandatory forms as "not fit for purpose" and said that anyone could set themselves up as a fire risk assessor and that no training or qualifications were necessary.

David Sibert, an experienced fire fighter and qualified fire engineer who advises the union, told the BBC the government had failed to respond to demands from the fire industry to reform the system following the Lakanal House blaze.

"There are no controls on who can be a fire risk assessor or the competence or the skills that they should have," he said.

"Following the fire at Lakanal House the fire industry pushed the government very hard to require fire risk assessors to have certain qualifications or to be on certain registers but we didn't get any traction from government at all."
Image caption There are no controls on who can be a fire risk assessor says FBU fire safety expert David Sibert

A fire risk assessment for Shepherd's Court conducted in October 2015 - before the blaze -identified the external panels as a possible fire risk.

Hammersmith and Fulham Council, which owns the block, insisted that the fire risk assessor was "trained and qualified".

But in its response to the London Fire Brigade in November 2015, the council admitted it did not know there was any probable risk with the panels.

"We are surprised to hear of any fire risk associated with façade," the council wrote, "as we had no knowledge of this prior to your letter."

A spokesman for Hammersmith & Fulham Council said: "A fire risk assessment of Shepherd's Court was carried out in 2013 by CS Todd & Associates Ltd, who are generally considered to be leaders in the field of fire safety management.

"This was still current at the time of the successfully contained fire in the tower block in 2016, which was started by a faulty tumble dryer, and resulted in no injuries or fatalities.

"The London Fire Brigade has subsequently made recommendations, including the testing of some building materials at Shepherd's Court, and we are fully complying with their directions."
Image caption Local residents are demanding action after the Grenfell fire

Prof Arnold Dix, a disaster specialist at the University of Western Sydney, described the letter to councils as "about the strongest warning you could get".

He said: "This is yet another example of an informed authority - in this case a fire brigade - and the best thing they can do is make a warning about something that they are obviously really, really concerned about.

"It's no different in substance to what the coroner did after the 2009 fire at Lakanal House.

"The coroner made a whole lot of recommendations that weren't acted on.

"It's just another example of the toothless nature of the administration of fire safety in the UK."

A statement from the Home Office said the law clearly sets out that the person responsible for the building has a duty to undertake a fire risk assessment and put in place adequate and appropriate fire precautions or "bring in a competent fire risk assessor to undertake it".

 

[snowychap]

The agenda (from here) is:

Quote

A1. Apologies for Absence

A2. Declarations of Interest

A3. Grenfell Tower fire (oral item – no written report)

 

Whilst there may indeed be a worry of a disruption of the proceedings, this doesn't come across as a way to win back trust (if that matters to them).

[peterms]

1 hour ago, snowychap said:

The agenda (from here) is:

 

Whilst there may indeed be a worry of a disruption of the proceedings, this doesn't come across as a way to win back trust (if that matters to them).

Clearly it doesn't.  They seem to be treating the survivors as a dangerous rabble.

I see the company in charge of managing the housing also takes a pretty high-handed and dismissive attitude towards them.

Quote

The company responsible for managing Grenfell Tower has changed the locks on a community centre used to provide art therapy for children affected by the tragedy, stranding parents and children outside in the street when they came to seek help.

Therapists had been running the club for a week, but when they turned up on Tuesday to find their keys no longer worked.

“They changed the locks without discussion or liaison,” said Susan Rudnik, who coordinated therapy at the centre. She practises at Chelsea and Westminster hospital and is a lecturer at Goldsmiths.

Families waited outside in the rain as the organisers tried to reach Kensington & Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation...

When the council meeting is held, one of the items on the agenda is "declarations of interest".  I wonder what will be said by committee member Rock Feilding-Mellen, a property developer from the landed gentry who is reportedly 

Quote

...currently setting about the “social cleansing” of the Silchester Estate in North Kensington very close to where he also happens to have purchased a somewhat more modest abode for a mere £1 million...

Our friend Rock is from the Wemyss estate, a family who made vast wealth from coal, one of the unfortunate externalities being dead miners.  (Maybe that's why they called him "Rock").

One of Rock's houses:

 

[peterms]

Long thread starting here about what is wrong with the inquiry which has been set up.

 

[TrentVilla]

3 hours ago, snowychap said:

The agenda (from here) is:

 

Whilst there may indeed be a worry of a disruption of the proceedings, this doesn't come across as a way to win back trust (if that matters to them).

When you say back, what do you mean exactly?

[snowychap]

5 hours ago, TrentVilla said:

When you say back, what do you mean exactly?

Well, it appears that they're more interested in 'challenging criticisms'.

Nick Paget-Brown, leader of Kensington and Chelsea council, reads statement as attempt to ban journalists from meeting fails after legal challenge

Quote

The embattled leader of Kensington and Chelsea council, Nick Paget-Brown, made a brief apology on Thursday for its response to the Grenfell Tower disaster, at a tense meeting from which members of the public were barred and journalists only allowed in after a last-minute legal challenge.

This first council cabinet meeting since the fire was initially intended to be held behind closed doors, but a group of media organisations including the Guardian obtained a high court order preventing the council from banning journalists at about 6pm – half an hour before the meeting was due to start. The doors were finally opened after the meeting had got under way, although those bereaved by the disaster and local residents were not allowed in.

In a statement read to fellow councillors and reporters, Paget-Brown said many of the criticisms of the council would be “challenged” in future.

“We are under sustained media criticism for a slow reaction to the fire, non-visibility and for failing to invest in North Kensington. I believe that many of these criticisms need to be challenged and over time they will be, but I can think of nothing more demeaning to the memory of those lost and missing in the fire than seeking the resolution of political scores.”

He acknowledged the condemnation of the council’s response to the fire and said he would “apologise for what we could have done better”. He added that the council’s “reputation with the wider community in North Kensington is damaged and in some cases fractured”.

Paget-Brown told the meeting: “The council will need to think about how we continue to recognise the immensity of this tragedy. It cannot be business as usual.” He said he would announce a team to oversee the “specific challenges posed by the fire and to ensure that we have a co-ordinated and visible response that is respected by the survivors”.

The plan to hold the meeting in private had drawn concern from Downing Street. No 10 said it wanted all parties involved in the fire aftermath “to be as open and transparent as possible, both with residents and the wider public to ensure full confidence in the response effort”. A spokeswoman said: “We would encourage everyone involved to respect this wherever possible.”

Labour’s Andrew Gwynne, the shadow communities secretary, added: “In order to deliver a response that survivors, residents and the wider public can trust, there is no room for anything less than complete transparency.”

Following his statement, Paget-Brown said the rest of the discussion about the tragedy could not be held with journalists present in order to avoid prejudicing the public inquiry.

...more on link

They wanted to hold it behind closed doors, were ordered to allow the media in by a high court order, only allowed them in after the meeting had started, issued a statement and then the cabinet **** off.

Edited June 29, 2017 by snowychap

[chrisp65]

Not a very impressive start for the Grenfell Inquiry if the Judge appointed is already saying residents will be disappointed in the narrow scope of the inquiry.

Quote

“I’ve been asked to undertake this inquiry on the basis that it would be pretty well limited to the problems surrounding the start of the fire and its rapid development, in order to make recommendations as to how this sort of thing can be prevented in the future,” Moore-Bick said afterwards.

“I would hope to be able to answer basic factual questions such as: how did the fire start, how did it spread, how was it able to engulf the whole of the building at such speed? And also questions such as what internal precautions there were, what steps were available for alerting residents and for allowing them to escape.”

Guardilion

 

[snowychap]

16 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Not a very impressive start for the Grenfell Inquiry if the Judge appointed is already saying residents will be disappointed in the narrow scope of the inquiry.

Chances that he quits before 20th July (start of summer recess)?

Edited June 29, 2017 by snowychap
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[chrisp65]

Just now, snowychap said:

Chanes that he quits before 20th July (start of summer recess)?

I'd like to think if that scope is still accurate when he's had a bit of thinking time, he'll either quit, or be driven out by the anger of the community.

 

[peterms]

Oh look, here's our little chum Rock again.

 

[peterms]

10 hours ago, snowychap said:

Well, it appears that they're more interested in 'challenging criticisms'.

Nick Paget-Brown, leader of Kensington and Chelsea council, reads statement as attempt to ban journalists from meeting fails after legal challenge

They wanted to hold it behind closed doors, were ordered to allow the media in by a high court order, only allowed them in after the meeting had started, issued a statement and then the cabinet **** off.

Little clip of the meeting here:

 

[TrentVilla]

 

How to appear like you've things to hide...

[peterms]

1 minute ago, TrentVilla said:

 

How to appear like you've things to hide...

This saga will be used as a case study for PR and comms people for years to come, as an example of everything not to do when handling a disaster.