Deregulation efforts led to ‘ignored’ safety concerns before Grenfell

The seven-year inquiry, published on Wednesday in its final report, said officials felt unable to raise concerns about fire safety because of the focus on deregulation. Ministers and senior officials were accused of “serious failure of leadership” for allowing such a culture to develop.

But the inquiry, led by retired judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick, went further, finding that the Government had “failed” in its responsibility to ensure public safety for over 25 years following a major fire in Knowsley Heights, Merseyside, in 1991.

After coming to power in 2010, the then coalition government and its Conservative successor elected in 2015 pursued a course of deregulation. This included a “one in, two out” policy on new regulations, which the investigation found put pressure on officials to cut red tape.

This pressure was particularly strong in the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), the ministry responsible for building regulations, which was headed at the time by Lord Eric Pickles, who was described in the inquiry as a “fervent advocate” of the policy.

Sir Martin's report shows that this culture meant there was little will to review or change building regulations for cladding, even after calls for changes were made at the July 2009 inquest into the deaths of six people at Lakanal House in Camberwell, south London.

The investigation found: “In the years following the Lakanal House fire, the government's deregulation programme, enthusiastically supported by some permanent secretaries and the foreign minister, dominated the thinking of the department to such an extent that even issues concerning the safety of human life were ignored, delayed or disregarded.”

Lord Pickles told the inquiry it would have been “ridiculous” for officials to believe the directive covered building safety regulations, and other ministers denied that the One In, Two Out directive had had an impact on building regulations, but the final report refuted this.

The report states: “It is disappointing that no effective steps were taken to alert ministers to these risks when officials became aware of matters posing a serious threat to life.”

“The failure to foster a culture in which concerns could be raised and open advice given represents a serious failure of leadership on the part of ministers and senior officials.”

Resistance to regulation also seemed to be the reason why then Local Government Minister Sir Brandon Lewis was reluctant to set up a national fire authority in 2013.

The investigation found that he was “not keen on the idea of ​​additional regulation” but was “more interested in making existing systems more efficient and taking power away from central government”.

It went on to say that “the basis of his optimism was not clear” and that his views were “extremely general in nature and did not relate to the specific merits of establishing a national fire authority”.

Taking a longer-term perspective, Sir Martin identified a number of missed opportunities dating back to the 1990s.

In 1999, a special parliamentary committee warned that the government could not wait until a serious fire involving fatalities occurred before taking action to protect high-rise buildings from fire.

The inquiry also found that the government had given “due consideration” to a large-scale fire safety test in 2001 and had not given “due urgency” to the coroner's recommendations following the Lakanal House fire.

It criticised the decision to close the Building Research Establishment's investigation into Lakanal House less than a month after the fire, calling it “premature and difficult to understand”, but said it was consistent with the DCLG's “lack of interest in learning lessons from the incident”.

The concerns raised by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Fire Safety were dismissed. The DCLG's stance on fire safety issues was described in the report as “complacent and at times defensive”.

It says ministers had “relied entirely on officials who appeared to have a free hand in deciding when and how to act, treated both the investigating judge and the MPs on the panel dismissively and showed a clear unwillingness to begin a review (of the guidelines) within a reasonable time”.

Considerable criticism was also directed at officer Brian Martin, who was the DCLG's principal building expert and had the most detailed knowledge of the fire safety sections of the Building Regulations.

The investigation found that despite his “relative position”, he was given “too much freedom of action without adequate supervision” and that he showed “little interest” in revising fire safety policies following the Lakanal House case.

Mr Martin was also accused of making “misleading statements” at the Lakanal House inquest and of writing a “disingenuous” submission to then Housing Minister Don Foster in 2013 which “seeked to suggest to the Minister that the concerns raised by the inquest judge were in fact unfounded”.