‘A desire to placate customers and manufacturers at the expense of safety’ - what the Grenfell inquiry report said about the BBA, the LABC and the NHBC
Our latest digest of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry report findings delves into the findings regarding an alphabet soup of three certification and building control organisations.
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In the latest of our series of digests of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry report, let’s take a look at the BBA, LABC and NHBC.
These are more technical passages of the report - and can be tricky to follow. But I’ve done my best to distill the important parts.
This aspect of the inquiry contains - in my view - some of its most important conclusions. It describes the means in a which a privatised regulatory system is captured by the interests which it is supposed to oversee, and has relevance far beyond the world of construction.
Let’s start with the BBA.
‘The BBA did no more than recycle Kingspan’s own false marketing literature’: The British Board of Agrement (BBA)
Who are they: Privatised in the 1980s, the BBA serves as essentially a ‘seal of approval’ for the construction sector.
If you are building something and you want to know whether or not the materials you have chosen are suitable, the standard thing to do is to look for their BBA certificate.
This certificate should contain all the details you need to decide whether or not it will be safe and compliant for a particular use. It is supposed to be a neutral, third party voice, which cuts through marketing jargon and offers trustable information.
But as a private entity, the companies who got certificates from the BBA became its clients. It needed their fees and their repeat business to survive. This created a serious conflict of interest - if it criticised them, it could lose business.
What is their connection to Grenfell: The BBA provided a certificate covering the performance of the ‘Reynobond PE55’ panels - the aluminium combustible material (ACM) cladding made by the company Arconic.
These panels are extremely combustible and have ultimately been identified as the primary cause of the fire spread at Grenfell. The BBA’s certificate was widely shared by the design team which worked on the tower, and considered by the planning committee and building control teams who approved and signed off the refurbishment.
The BBA also provided certificates for Kingspan’s K15 insulation, one of the combustible insulation materials installed behind the cladding panels.
What the inquiry report said about the BBA: A key problem with the BBA’s cladding certificate is that it included a diagram showing the material fixed to a wall in two ways.
One was a flat sheet attached with rivets, and the other showed the sheet bent into an L-shape so it could be clipped on to hidden rails (known as a cassette system).
A key fire test Arconic provided to the BBA as it wrote this certificate only covered the first of these two combinations - the rivetted system, which had a ‘Euroclass B’ rating. Arconic never told the BBA that the cassette system actually performed far, far worse in a fire - burning so badly it was unclassifiable.
The report said the BBA “overlooked” this gap in the testing it had been given despite the fact that some of its team “knew that altering the shape of a product could materially affect its fire performance”. It called this “a fundamentally unsound approach”.
As well as two means of fixing the cladding to buildings, the cladding material itself was also available in two fire safety grades: pure polyethylene and fire retardant (FR). The BBA certificate covered both. On its front sheet, it contained a statement saying that the products “may be regarded as having a Class 0 surface”.
This statement was pivotal in persuading contractors and building control surveyors that the material was acceptable for use on high rises, because Class 0 was the required standard for high rise cladding in England.
But the BBA had, in fact, only ever seen a test which showed the less combustible ‘FR’ product achieved Class 0. It had never seen any tests on the ‘PE’ version of the material.
A close reading of the certificate would show that the testing only covered the FR product, and the inquiry said a “competent construction professional” should have read it in such depth and understood this.
But it also said that the wording on the front sheet was “not merely poor but misleading”, adding that “the BBA and Arconic must both bear responsibility” for this.
Seven years after it was first issued in 2007, the BBA attempted to gain additional data from Arconic to review it. By this point, the product had failed multiple fire safety tests - many of them seriously, and there was mounting concern about the use of ACM globally. But the BBA had not been told this.
Arconic effectively stonewalled the BBA when it asked for the latest testing data, providing no response to more than half a dozen emails and many calls seeking further test data. But the BBA agreed “at a senior level” to renew the certificate anyway. “[That] decision is inexplicable,” the report said, branding the BBA’s actions “an unsafe and unsatisfactory position”.
With regard to its Kingspan certificate, first issued in 2008, the position was different because regulatory guidance did prohibit this combustible insulation from being used on high rises in most circumstances. The only exception was in the precise system which had passed a large-scale test. The certificate should have made this clear.
Instead, the BBA included a statement saying that the insulation would not “contribute to the development stages of a fire or present a smoke or toxic hazard”.
“No witness from Kingspan or from the BBA was able to offer a coherent explanation of the meaning of, or the basis for, that sentence or how it could properly be said to apply to K15, a combustible polymeric foam,” the report said.
“The BBA did no more than recycle Kingspan’s own false marketing literature,” it added.
Rather than saying the material was essentially banned from being used on high rises in almost all circumstances, the certificate instead encouraged specifiers to contact Kingspan directly to understand whether or not the material could be used on high rise buildings. The firm would tell potential customers that it did.
This “plain and obvious conflict of interest… appears to have passed unnoticed by the BBA,” the report said.
A later version of the report said the insulation could be used “in accordance with” the passages of the official guidance which set the standards for high rise buildings - despite Kingspan’s insulation falling below these standards.
The report called this passage “dangerously misleading”. “We are left in no doubt that Kingspan took advantage of the BBA’s initial failure properly to investigate the characteristics of K15 and thereafter did all it could to ensure that the certificates did not include wording that restricted the suitability of K15 for use on buildings over 18 metres in height,” the report said.
Local Authority Building Control (LABC)
Who are they: LABC is a private company, which also serves as a representative and training authority for building control officers employed at local councils - the people responsible for signing off construction projects as compliant with the regulations.
By the 2000s, they had expanded into product certification - producing ‘type approval’ certificates which represented “a singular initial Building Regulation approval in respect of a standard construction matter”. These were expected to be accepted by all their members at local authorities, to save them the difficulty of checking each item individually.
What is their connection to Grenfell: LABC provided certificates for the two insulation products used on the tower - Kingspan’s K15 and Celotex’s RS5000. Both of these were combustible products which could only be used on high rises in the very specific systems which they had been tested in.
But the LABC got this wrong - stating that the products could be used above 18m without restriction. This was a serious and basic error.
What the inquiry report said about them: LABC’s certificate, which said Kingspan’s K15 could be used on high rises was first published in May 2009. The inquiry was scathing about its wording, calling it “fundamentally incorrect in every respect.”
The certificate was produced by David Jones, a building control inspector at Herefordshire Council. He had no experience of fire safety or safety testing and was initially reluctant to take the job - but was told by the LABC’s management that he could essentially trust the claims in the BBA certificate (described above), because they would have carried out more thorough checks.
The report found that the Kingspan representatives who came to visit him were able to confuse him with fire test data and persuade him to go further than the BBA had - including the blunt statement that the product was suitable for high rises without restriction.
“He acted largely on trust, but was badly let down by LABC and deliberately misled by Kingspan,” the inquiry said.
It said the LABC’s systems to check the accuracy of the certificate “were woefully inadequate”.
When Rockwool, a competitor of Kingspan which sold non-combustible mineral wool insulation, complained about the certificate, there was “a complete failure to investigate” which was branded “irresponsible” by the report. It added that Kingspan was given “preferential treatment” by the LABC.
In 2014 Celotex, a competitor of Kingspan’s which was also seeking to access the high rise market with its combustible insulation, also sought a certificate from the LABC.
It asked them to include a passage of text which said their product could also be used above 18m due to the large-scale test it had passed. The LABC was happy to include this without even viewing the testing report - something the report described as “remarkable”. “Its approach was fundamentally flawed,” the report said.
This certificate was available for a year, before it was replaced with a new draft which did include the statement that the material’s use was limited to the specific system tested.
But this wording was buried in a sub-paragraph, and LABC did nothing to state publicly that the previous certificate was no longer valid. “Plainly, it should have done so,” the report said.
‘The attitude of NHBC… deserves criticism in the strongest terms’: The National House Building Council (NHBC)
Who are they: The NHBC is a very large player in the construction sector. Set up by the house building industry, its main role is to provide warranties on newly built homes. But a separate division of its business also carries out building control functions.
If developers don’t want to go to the local council for building control sign off, they could use the NHBC (or one of a large number of smaller private firms) instead. In this role as the country’s largest building control authority, the NHBC’s view on the interpretation of building regulations and the acceptability of various products was very important.
What is their connection to Grenfell: The NHBC had no direct connection to Grenfell, which was signed off by the local council’s building control team.
However, it did have a big connection to the wider use of combustible materials on high rise buildings. The company was engaged in a sometimes difficult negotiation with Kingspan throughout the 2010s about whether or not it would continue to accept its insulation on high rise buildings, and also engaged in publishing industry guidance about the applicability building regulations generally - which included controversial statements about the permissability of combustible cladding products.
What the inquiry report said about them: The report said that by 2010 “at the latest” the NHBC was aware that combustible insulation was “commonly being used” on tall buildings.
The NHBC itself - through its building control arm - had signed off many projects with Kingspan insulation, based on the BBA certificate and an assurance from Kingspan’s team, which amounted to little more than “a bald assertion that K15 was suitable for the project, without any technical assessment or analysis”.
As the 2010s developed, the NHBC became increasingly aware that it should not be approving Kingspan for use on high rises. But this left it in a bind: it had already signed off hundreds of buildings, and provided warranties on them. Admitting a mistake at this stage would be commercially difficult, and the inquiry concluded this was why it did not.
“NHBC’s continued endorsement of [Kingspan’s K15’s] use [on high rises] from then on was unjustifiable and amounted to an abdication of its responsibility,” the report added.
The firm went on to issue a warning to staff to check with Kingspan before approving a project - but did not order them to stop signing it off. The report said that rather than this “flimsy warning”, it should have told its surveyors to reject the material “unless and until” test evidence which supported the proposed system was produced.
“The failure of NHBC to do so reflects a desire at the time to placate customers and manufacturers at the expense of safety,” the report said.
The firm went on to work with other industry bodies to draft ‘Technical Guidance Note 18’ - a document which reinterpretted the official guidance to say that systems which had not been tested could be approved, if they were subject to a ‘desktop study’ (an assessment by a fire engineer which predicted the outcome if tested).
NHBC witnesses argued that this approach was justified by the wording of the official guidance. The inquiry report went through this argument in detail and rejected it - concluding instead that the guidance note had materially expanded the scope of the rules, allowing the use of combustible materials in a wider range of scenarios that the government had intended.
“It was wholly unnecessary and indeed dangerous for NHBC to strive to find a way to help developers who wished to use non-compliant cladding products to do so,” the report said. “It was not appropriate for NHBC to seek to circumvent or dilute the effectiveness of the [official] guidance.”
The report added that this willingness to “work with industry rather than hold it to proper standards” demonstrated the “corrupting” influence of privatised building control functions.
The firm went further. In July 2016, it published a guidance note on commonly accepted cladding systems which endorsed the use of ACM systems and combustible insulation, without even the submission of a desktop study. The report said this “drove a coach and horses through the [official] guidance” and “should never have been published”.
“The action of NHBC provides a vivid example of a large body with substantial influence over building control officers nationwide electing to co-operate with manufacturers rather than robustly enforce regulations designed to protect life. The attitude of NHBC… deserves criticism in the strongest terms,” the report said.
This is part of a series of digests on the findings of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry report. Previous posts have covered:
RBKC and the TMO as client and building control
I’ll continue to publish posts like this over the coming weeks alongside more general content. Subscribe to keep up to date.
Any other business…
You may be wondering why a newsletter so concerned with the Grenfell Tower fire has been silent on the decision to demolish the tower, which was announced this week. The truth is, this is a topic on which I find it difficult to speak. Feelings in the community on both sides are both very strong and very understandable. There are bereaved families who view the tower as a sacred final resting place for their loved ones, and cannot accept the idea of it being demolished. There are others who fear knocking it down will mean it is ‘out of sight and out of mind’ - and may even hinder the criminal process. But then, there are members of the community immediately surrounding it traumatised by the daily sight of the tower, and terrified about its structural stability. How do you start to choose between these two positions? My view is that I have no right to give a view - it is for those directly affected to speak. The government’s role was to build trust between groups, listen and find the best compromise possible. A good deal of the anger expressed yesterday suggests that has not been achieved.
I am on a podcast series this week with disaster expert Dr Lucy Easthope. It’s a very important topic from someone who has seen it all in this area, and followers of this Substack will probably appreciate it. You can listen here.
Finally, over at Inside Housing, I highly commend this investigation into a TikTok “entrepreneur”, who has been promoting a get-rich-quick scheme in which investors put money into “social housing” for a tidy return. It transpires he is really offering investment in a fairly bog standard rent-to-rent scheme, and justifies his misuse of the term social housing by saying “Let’s not worry about these little things”. The interview also contains his rather wonderful quote: “Property is full of money-driven bellends.” Quite.
This content is not behind a paywall, but since it takes time to create and upload each piece, do please consider becoming a paid subscriber (especially if this project is something that you value, and you have the means to do so), which is either billed monthly at £3.50 or annually at £35. A paid subscriber has full access to the back catalogue of posts.
If you pay £40 or more for an annual subscription, I will send you a signed copy of my book. Or you can buy a copy here.
Tenant groups, campaigners, students, those on lower incomes - hit reply and I’ll gift you a sub for free.