'It assumed that others had considered the fire safety and failed to appreciate its own responsibility' - What did the inquiry report say about RBKC and KCTMO's role in the refurbishment?

KCTMO and RBKC were criticised for their role in the doomed refurbishment of Grenfell Tower, as well as their management of the building in general

Oct 23, 2024

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The failures of KCTMO (the council-owned management company responsible for Grenfell Tower) and RBKC (the council which ultimately owned it), extend well beyond the actual refurbishment which fitted it with combustible cladding.

Both failed in their duty to keep Grenfell Tower safe - particularly with regard to the catastrophic and causative failure to maintain the self-closing devices on the building’s flat entrance doors. RBKC also made a horrible mess of the post-fire response.

But both also formed part of the construction job which fitted the tower with dangerous cladding. Here we take a look at their roles in more detail.

What role did they play in the refurbishment?

KCTMO has protested previously that it was essentially let down by its contractors and sub-contractors - effectively a helpless innocent victim of the failures of the construction sector.

The report shows sympathy to this position, saying that responsibility “rests primarily on those who designed, constructed and approved the work and some of those who manufactured and sold the materials they used.”.

However, it does not let KCTMO - who took the role of client during the construction work - off the hook, saying that in particular it “failed to take sufficient care in its choice of architect and paid insufficient attention to fire safety matters, including the work of the fire engineer”.

RBKC’s involvement in the refurbishment, meanwhile, was two-fold. It set KCTMO’s budget, and had an influence on the project as the ultimate landlord of the tower. And its building control team ultimate signed the work off, despite its manifest non-compliance.

‘We are satisfied that the initial motive for cladding Grenfell Tower was to improve its visual appearance’ - the initial decision to refurbish

From the start, this refurbishment was never done with the right motivations. Rather than a holistic look at what Grenfell Tower needed, the focus was on the construction of a school and leisure centre at its base.

With residents unhappy about this work, some money was put together via basement sales for improvement works to the tower.

RBKC’s cabinet member for housing - who ultimately planned to knock down and redevelop the entire estate - “was concerned to know whether [this work] would hinder or obstruct any future potential regeneration of the Lancaster West estate”, the report said.

The work was also unashamedly cosmetic. The decision to overclad the tower was taken without any assessment of the thermal performance of the tower, beyond one councillor standing in a flat and deciding it felt a little draughty. They wanted to give the tower a facelift, to make a good backdrop to the new school facility.

“In the light of that evidence, we are satisfied that the initial motive for cladding Grenfell Tower was to improve its visual appearance and to prevent its looking like a poor relation to the [school and leisure centre development next door],” the report said. “The desire to improve the thermal efficiency of the building was a later consideration.”

‘We need hardly say that it was quite improper for the TMO to resort to a scheme of that kind’ - the appointment of the architects

The appointment of the team, especially the architects, was highly criticised by the report. Studio E had no experience in overcladding high rise buildings and - on their own admission - would have lost if a public procurement exercise had been carried out.

But KCTMO and RBKC wanted the same team who were building the school appointed to refurbish the tower - so deliberately split and repressed the architect’s fee to avoid public sector procurement thresholds.

“We need hardly say that it was quite improper for the TMO to resort to a scheme of that kind in order to evade the rules on procurement,” the report said.

It was the council that wanted the same team appointed, the report said, with KCTMO “content to acquiesce in the desire of RBKC to engage the team that it had used on the KALC project in the hope of reducing both cost and delay”.

The report said this decision “illustrates the TMO’s general approach to the appointment of its professional team, which was to prioritise saving cost over other considerations”.

KCTMO carried out no assessment of whether the architects were capable and competent for the job of overcladding the tower, simply assuming they would be able to do it. “That assumption turned out to be incorrect and led to a series of decisions which had disastrous consequences,” the report said.

“The TMO ought to have taken steps to satisfy itself that Studio E had, or could obtain, the right skills and resources to carry out the work efficiently,” it added.

It said this failure was “all the more remarkable” because Grenfell Tower resident raised “that very question” at a meeting of the Lancaster West Estate Management Board on 15 May 2012.

He asked whether Studio E had experience of working on tower blocks and, if not, why they had been chosen for the project. He never received an answer.

‘Those involved in the meeting knew or should have known that what they were doing was improper’ - the procurement process

After the originally appointed contractor Leadbitter priced the job several million pounds higher than their available budget, KCTMO and RBKC agreed to head out to the market to attempt to procure a contractor to do it more cheaply.

KCTMO did this despite its management consultants expressly advising it not to, and warning it instead to either reduce the scope of the works or increase the budget.

In fact, KCTMO staff placed pressure on its consultants, Artelia, to rewrite the sections of their report which contained this advice, and remove criticism of KCTMO from others. Internal emails said KCTMO staff had to “twist [Artelia’s] arms quite hard” to obtain the revised report.

“In our view the evidence shows that the TMO put significant pressure on Artelia to make changes which it would not otherwise have made,” the report said.

The procurement exercise then resulted - as described in the report on Rydon’s role - in the appointment of the lowest-priced contractor.

KCTMO had said it would involve residents in this process, but the report said “their involvement was largely symbolic, having been hastily arranged and entirely undocumented”, with just two invited and their opinions averaged along with the professionals and KCTMO to “dilute their contribution”.

After KCTMO internally selected Rydon, as it was the cheapest, they then carried out an ‘offline’ value engineering exercise to cut further costs from the job before the contract was awarded.

This went against procurement rules and against the advice of KCTMO’s own solicitors.

“Those involved in the meeting knew or should have known that what they were doing was improper,” the report said.

KCTMO sought cost reductions - which included the substition of the cladding panels for the cheapest available - without seeking any budget increases from RBKC. “It is striking that the TMO appears to have given no thought at any stage to asking RBKC to increase the budget,” the report said, noting that RBKC did later sign off a higher budget which would have covered the costs of the originally selected, non-combustible cladding.

‘None of them read it or, if they did, that they did not take proper note of its contents’ - approach to fire safety

A major question for the panel during its work investigating the refurbishment has been the fire safety strategy, and why it was never completed. This document - produced by consultancy Exova - said the works would have “no adverse effect” in terms of external fire spread, but added that this would be “confirmed” in a later version of the report. No later version was ultimately produced.

The inquiry report concluded that the key members of the team at the KCTMO should have read this report, that since it was “not difficult to understand” they should “certainly have noticed that, in relation at least to the external wall, the advice it contained was provisional only”.

It concluded however that “none of them read it or, if they did, that they did not take proper note of its contents”.

“The TMO should have taken care to make sure that the safety of the residents from fire had been comprehensively and finally addressed in detail. Instead, it assumed that others had considered the fire safety of the building and failed to appreciate its own responsibility for a matter of such importance,” the report said.

It said not properly considering the fire safety strategy in relation to the cladding was “a serious failure”.

Claire Williams, project manager for the job, did raise fire safety questions with Rydon at two stages. In an email referred to as her “Lacknall moment”, she specifically asked if the cladding panels being used on the tower were fire safe. This is because she had attended a conference where the 2009 Lakanal House fire was mentioned (she spelled the name of the building incorrectly in her email).

Ms Williams claimed under oath that she had been told by Rydon that the panels were “inert” and that this assurance had even been recorded in project team minutes. Rydon’s witnesses hotly disputed this - and the inquiry sided with them, saying that it was “unable to regard the evidence of… Ms Williams on this matter as reliable”.

This was because no such document was ever found. It added that Ms Williams had omitted any reference to this claim from her first statement, and only added it after she saw a reference to it in a colleagues statement.

“It is difficult to understand how such an important matter could have escaped her mind [when she wrote her original statement],” the panel said.

The report also criticised KCTMO for not appointing a ‘client design advisor’ to help it on the job, despite being given the opportunity to do so, which the report said reflected an “unrealistic view” of its own expertise.

“The TMO’s decision not to appoint a client design adviser at modest expense was foolish and reflected an overconfidence in its ability to manage the design aspects of the project itself,” the report said.

‘[Residents] were given no formal role and had no voice during the refurbishment’ - resident involvement

The report also criticised KCTMO for not involving residents. Despite a specific obligation to do so under its ‘modular management agreement’ with the council, the body failed to establish a “client review group”, with resident participation, or nominate residents to join the project team or take part in the discussion over the appointment of consultants.

“Any engagement the residents had with the procurement process was largely symbolic,” the report said. “Although consultation exercises and meetings with residents did take place, they were given no formal role and had no voice during the refurbishment.”

‘This was a serious weakness in the way RBKC’s building control department was run’ - building control sign off

There has been little dispute that RBKC’s building control team should not have signed off the project. The council itself has admitted failures in this area, and the officer himself, John Hoban, did so as well during his evidence - one of the only witnesses to openly admit failure during the entire four year process.

Nonetheless, the report is unsurprisingly scathing of his work. Among several failures, it said he showed a “willingness to accommodate” the architects which “led him to disregard the primary function of building control, with the result that a critical opportunity to scrutinise the design of the cladding was missed”.

However, the report also made broader criticism of the building control department at the council - which had been understaffed for years before the fire, with a special projects team disbanded and a poor workplace culture.

“Although Mr Hoban must bear primary responsibility for the failure of RBKC’s building control department to deal properly with the refurbishment project, his ability to carry out his task effectively was hampered by an excessive workload and poor management of the department as a whole,” the report said.

It said the failure to monitor the skills and training of officers was “a serious weakness in the way RBKC’s building control department was run”, and also highlighted poor document management and an absent quality control process.

“We have no doubt that the shortcomings in the management of the department… played a significant part in Mr Hoban’s failure to carry out his role properly,” the report said, adding that this meant the council “bears considerable responsibility for the dangerous condition of Grenfell Tower”.

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I have also written summaries of the report’s comments on the architects, fire engineers, cladding sub-contractors , main contractor and housing management. I will continue to work through other key players in the coming weeks.

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