On 30th of March 2022 Peter Apps wrote in inside housing about an official who accepted that the government made wrong representation about the cladding guidance after Grenfell fire. According to him, After the Grenfell Tower disaster, a civil servant admitted that the government provided a “false representation” regarding its official guidelines, but disputed that this was a “planned, purposeful, and underhanded” attempt to protect its position in the aftermath of the tragic inferno.
Brian Martin recognised “to some extent” his personal responsibility for “a record of mistakes, errors, and omissions” in the years leading up to the blaze, after more than seven days of cross-examination in front of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry today.
“There were a number of situations where I might have perhaps stopped” the fire, he told the commission in a sad concluding statement.
The concluding stages of his lengthy cross-examination, which was the longest of the more than 100 witnesses who have testified before the panel, focused on his actions in the days following the June 2017 fire that killed 72 people.
He was questioned about a contentious letter sent eight days after the fire, in which the government claimed that official guidance in Approved Document B, which he had been in charge of for nearly 18 years, had prohibited the use of the combustible aluminium composite material (ACM) panels that had been installed on the tower.
This, according to the letter, was due to a clause requiring “filler material” to meet the stringent fire criterion of “restricted combustibility,” which applied to the combustible plastic in the composite panel’s core.
Melanie Dawes, a senior government official, said that this statement indicated that “restricted combustibility” materials have to be used on “any element of the cladding system.” Mr. Martin admitted in his testimony that this was not the case.
Richard Millett QC, counsel to the inquiry, questioned, “Do you know how this incorrect portrayal of the government’s position… came to be inserted in this footnote?”
“It was a mistake on my part; I must have missed it,” Mr Martin said, adding that he was “probably rather fatigued at the time.”
Mr Millett questioned, “Are you sure this wasn’t a calculated, purposeful, and underhanded attempt by you and those around you to rewrite history in light of the 71 deaths at Grenfell [that night] in order to defend the government’s position after the event?”
Mr Martin replied, “No.”
The letter was drafted by figures including Sir Ken Knight, a former government advisor and current chair of its expert panel, Martin Shipp, a former technical development director at the Building Research Establishment (BRE), and consultant Colin Todd, according to an email chain seen by the inquiry.
Mr Todd amended the addendum to “pound it home” that flammable cladding was prohibited, according to Mr Shipp.
Mr Todd, who is now an expert witness before the inquiry, previously endorsed the government’s interpretation of this important phrase in a report to the inquiry, stating that it would be “illogical” to exclude the core of an ACM panel.
He did not include in his report that he assisted in the drafting of a footnote for the government outlining this interpretation in the immediate wake of the fire.
Mr Millett then inquired if Mr Martin had informed Ms Dawes of a series of events previously mentioned in his testimony when he briefed her on the guidelines in Approved Document B two days prior to the letter’s dispatch.
These included the following:
->In 2006, he added the phrase “filler content” to the advice “without any external inspection, comment, or definition, at the last minute and beneath the radar.”
->To avoid the department being “subjected to court review” by industry, the change was “not publicised in the regular way.”
->Following an industry summit in June 2014, he had not defined the definition as asked, and he had been informed that the guideline on ACM cladding was “not clear, susceptible to interpretation, and misleading.”
->That he’d told colleagues in the department that a massive cladding fire, similar to those seen in the Middle East, “should not happen here” because of the guidance’s safeguards, despite the fact that they were ambiguous.
->In January 2016, he was advised by a “reputable” cladding consultant that ACM was widely used in the United Kingdom and that the situation was “gravely concerning.”
Mr Martin contacted numerous industry experts with a “pre-prepared script” claiming the cladding was barred by the advice in the days following the fire, according to the investigation.
He had urged them to publicly repeat the allegation in order to “rebut” a news story that the cladding material was not prohibited.
When asked why he did this today, he stated he was told to by “someone high in the press office.”
“Did you think it was appropriate to approach these organisations with a pre-written script to be presented as if it were an independent expert’s opinion in favour of the government’s interpretation of the guidance following the fire?” Mr Millett enquired.
“I’d never been asked to perform anything like this before.” “I understand it’s not rare,” Mr Martin said, adding that as a “junior official,” “you get on and do it” if “you get directed to do anything like that.”
He was also questioned about a meeting with a list of specialists he helped put together on the Saturday after the fire to brief the minister on the government’s future moves.
The purpose of the conference was to figure out what caused the fire to spread so quickly and whether or not the conflagration was “an isolated incidence.”
Mr Martin, who “led the debate,” however, did not divulge that he had been notified that the cladding was being widely used in the UK, nor did he explore the ambiguity around the guidance, nor did he reveal that an ACM cladding system had failed a government-commissioned test in 2001.
“Was one of the reasons, or the reason, why you didn’t discuss any of the issues I’ve just raised because you realised, in the harshest possible terms, that the catastrophic series of blunders [were] unquestionably yours and you didn’t want to admit it?” Mr Millett enquired.
Mr Martin said, “No.”
Mr Millett inquired, “Is there any other explanation?”
Mr Martin explained, “Because we were focused on the immediate response.”
When asked if he would do anything differently at the end of his testimony, Mr Martin had to hold back tears as he stated, “I find it impossible to describe how sad I am for what has happened to the inhabitants of Grenfell Tower.”
“I’ve been looking at the evidence and records over the last few months, and when you line them up the way we’ve done over the last seven days, it became evident to me that there were a number of occasions where I could have, maybe, prevented this from happening.”
“I believe I became entrenched in a position where I was focused on what I could do to better the Approved Documents and didn’t see the magnitude of the situation.”
“What I’ll say is that the regulatory approaches of successive governments had an impact on the way we worked, the resources we had at our disposal, and perhaps the mindset that we’d acquired as a team, and myself.”
“I believe as a result of that, I became the department’s single point of failure.”
The hearing will resume tomorrow with testimony from James Wharton, a former government minister in charge of construction rules.
Former fire minister and current Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis testified earlier today.