In the early 2000s, the UK government was warned that the country risked becoming the continent’s “dumping ground” for dangerous cladding and insulation products. At the time, civil servants were working on plans to harmonise fire standards with the rest of the European Union – but this harmonisation never happened.
Corporate lobbyists had argued against it, claiming there would be “economic consequences” if their members were unable to sell their combustible building products freely. As standards were tightened in much of Europe, the UK would not update its outdated guidance for the next 17 years.
The result was gaps in the regulation, which the free market was more than efficient enough to find and exploit. “The evolution of fire regulation will put [highly combustible cladding] out of the market in the coming month[s],” wrote a senior figure at cladding firm Arconic in 2009. “For the moment, even if we know that [the material] has a bad behaviour exposed to fire, we can still work with national regulations who are not as restrictive.”
One such market was the UK, which Arconic targeted with its violently combustible panels, knowing that their marginally lower cost would make them attractive. The panels were fitted on hundreds of tall buildings around the country.
One was Grenfell Tower. And in June 2017, it caught fire, the block was engulfed in flames and 72 people died horrible, avoidable deaths. It is important to recount this story now because the lessons have been ignored.
The government is now preparing to sweep away thousands of EU rules of the statue book in a single stroke. This is what prompted the former business secretary, Jacob Rees-Mogg, to gleefully tweet his approval this month of “igniting the deregulatory bonfire”.
This particular choice of words, which those on the economic right seem so fond of as a way of describing the removal of restrictions on business, is unforgivable given what happened in 2017. And make no mistake: the lines between economic deregulation and the Grenfell Tower fire are clear.
Ever since Margaret Thatcher’s government stripped away hundreds of prescriptive rules for the construction sector in the 1980s, in the name of freeing industry to innovate, experts have warned of disaster. This included the end of London-specific rules which had prevented the use of combustible materials on the walls of tall buildings. Such red tape was for a prior era: now the market would be able to make its own decisions about what was and wasn’t safe.
The priority given to deregulation continued throughout the New Labour era and was turbocharged in 2012, with Conservative prime minister David Cameron pledging to “kill health and safety culture”. He introduced a “one in, one out” rule to reduce the regulatory “burden” on the private sector. This was described as an “effective moratorium” on new fire safety rules by a former civil servant at the Grenfell inquiry.
And so in 2013, when an inquest into six deaths in a fire at Lakanal House in south London in 2009 revealed that combustible external panels had helped the blaze spread, the necessary steps to prevent a repeat did not happen. The coroner had told the government to review the relevant rules “with particular regard” to the risk of external fire spread. But this was not done. Asked why, civil servants repeatedly cited deregulatory pressures and a lack of interest in new regulations from the ministers they reported to.
The government had also contracted a fire research body to monitor real-world fires of “special interest” – those which suggested there may be a need to reform the building regulations. Except, they weren’t allowed to conclude this. In October 2012, the government inserted a clause into the BRE’s contract which said the reports should “not contain any policy recommendations” or recommend changes to official guidance.
“This came after the general move towards deregulation, so regulation was not welcome,” said the scientist who led this work when asked why. On the day of the fire, one civil servant in the department responsible for the regulations wrote in an internal email: “Some of the stuff about ‘disproportionate burdens’ feels uncomfortable today.”
Five years on, deregulation continues to be one of the government’s driving ambitions. The consequences will be seen and felt in the years to come.
Peter Apps is the author of Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen
