'Marred by unprofessional conduct, inadequate practices and a lack of scientific rigour': What the inquiry report said about the Building Research Establishment
As we continue our step-by-step journey through the Grenfell Tower Inquiry report, let's turn our attention to the Building Research Establishment
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As I continue to pick through the detail in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry report, let’s turn this week to the sad story of the Building Research Establishment (BRE) - the testing and research facility which played a major role in the stories of government failure and corporate capture.
Prior posts on the report have covered the social housing providers, recommendations, architects, fire engineers, cladding sub-contractors , main contractor and 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.
Who are the BRE?
The BRE has a long history in the world of British building science. It was initially established in 1921, as the government embarked on a major programme of public housing, hoping to improve health standards and provide better living conditions for soldiers returning from World War I.
It was privatised in 1997, becoming what it now calls a “profit for purpose” organisation - it raised profits by winning contracts from the public and private sector, and reinvested them in its business via a trust structure.
What role did they play in this story?
In the Grenfell story, the focus was on its relationship with commercial companies as a testing body, and as a contractor to the government as an advisor.
For the commercial manufacturers, the BRE helped them run large-scale tests on mock cladding systems. These tests were important because building regulations guidance only permitted the use of combustible plastic insulation on high rises in systems which had passed such a test.
With regard to their advice to the government the inquiry asked whether they should have done more to warn of the risk of cladding fires, and the need to change guidance as a result.
‘They gave the department the false impression that the regulations and guidance were working effectively’ - the early years
The story started in 1991 - with its investigation of a fire in Knowsley Heights in Merseyside. This non-fatal blaze has ended up a major part of the story, because it was an enormous missed warning about the risks of cladding.
Knowsley Heights was a government-funded pilot scheme for overcladding existing high rise buildings and was being overseen by the BRE.
But when it came to write a report into the fire, which ripped rapidly across all 11 floors of the building, it pointed only to missing cavity barriers and not the fact that the plastic material which the cladding was made out of ignited and sent the fire up the building. As such, the fire was a crucial missed opportunity to ban the use of this kind of material going forward.
The inquiry report put this down to error on the BRE’s part, saying the authors had likely “equated Class 0 [a grading which the panels held] with non-combustibility”, when in fact many combustible materials can obtain a Class 0 rating. It called this a “basic error” which resulted in “a significant opportunity” to amend the guidance being missed.
A further fire, which also spread over plastic panels, this time in Irving, Scotland in 1999, also resulted in investigations by the BRE.
But something mysterious happened. The firm wrote two reports: one for the local council and one for central government.
The report to the council made reference to the same Class 0 standard which had been at the root of its mistake at Knowsley. But in the report it submitted to government these passages were removed, despite it being otherwise identical. The inquiry said it was confident these changes were “deliberate” but said it was unable to ascertain “why the information was suppressed”.
These reports “were characterised by superficiality and a lack of analysis, with the result that they gave the department the false impression that the regulations and guidance were working effectively”, the report said.
In the early 2000s, the BRE carried out research into the risks of various cladding materials, under a contract from government. This included a literature review in 2000, which was called “a poor piece of work”, “superficial at best” and “repeating the error” that Class 0 effectively meant non-combustibility.
The BRE then carried out a series of tests in 2001 on real world cladding systems, which included one on the material later used on Grenfell. This failed drastically, despite meeting the Class 0 classification. This meant it could legitimately be used on buildings, and therefore the BRE’s work had uncovered a dramatic threat to life.
But while the BRE did draw attention to this in its research report to the department, it did not spell out the gravity of what it had discovered, noting only that “those matters might require further consideration”.
The report said that given the obvious and severe risks, this limited advice “fell far short of what was required” and that its failure to make clear the risks “in suitably forceful terms bears some responsibility” for the significance of the tests being missed by government officials.
A theme throughout this period was appearing to play down or misunderstand the weakness of the ‘Class 0’ standard. We know from the evidence that major manufacturers, particularly of insulation products, liked this standard because it gave combustible materials a route to markets they would otherwise struggle to access.
In one instance staff at the BRE actively removed a warning from testing guidance which specified that ‘Class 0’ was only relevant to the surface of a product. The panel said they were confident “commercial considerations” played a role in this decision.
‘What was needed was proper independent advice, which the department did not want to receive’ - investigation of real fires
For many years, the BRE was also engaged to write ‘Investigation of Real Fires’ reports for the government, making about £100,000 a year from the work between 2006 and 2017.
But this was a small budget for a series which could involve more than 500 fire reports per year. The BRE was only able to commit 28 days a year to the work, and carry out eight site visits. The report said its work averaged out to around 15 minutes per fire, often largely based on reports in the non-specialist media. This meant some significant fires - including at least two involving ACM cladding - were not fully investigated.
“In our view it was unsatisfactory for the department and BRE to be pursuing a project of this kind on the basis of such superficial information,” the panel said. “BRE ought to have told the department that its findings and advice were becoming increasingly unreliable and that unless the budget could be improved to maintain standards it could no longer provide information of the quality the department expected to receive.”
Every single one of these reports contained the assurance that the fires studied had “reaffirmed the overall effectiveness of the building regulations and [guidance]” even in incidents where, the report said, they “self-evidently did not”.
In fact, in 2012, the BRE signed up to an agreement not to include any policy recommendations in their reports - regardless of the fires they investigated.
The government said the process as a whole was “flawed in a number of important respects” and “amounted to little more than reciting information about fires obtained from news reports” followed by “formulaic conclusions”.
“In our assessment the operation of the project epitomised what had gone wrong in BRE’s relationship with the government; what was needed was proper independent advice, which the department did not want to receive,” the panel said. “The project thus helped to foster an attitude of complacency within both BRE and the government about the [official guidance].”
The report reserved particularly stern criticism for a report specifically on the risk of external fire spead which it was commissioned to write in the aftermath of the 2009 Lakanal House fire, and raised no major concerns about the use of combustible cladding products around the UK.
“That particular piece of work… was seriously inadequate,” the report said. “It was deeply flawed in almost every respect, lacked any scientific value and purported to draw positive conclusions about the effectiveness of the regulations and guidance that could not sensibly have been reached on the basis of the work that had been carried out.”
‘Employees were liable to be drawn into relationships with customers that undermined the independence, objectivity and rigour of their work’ - the BRE and the manufacturers
The BRE’s test facilities were used for large-scale tests by insulation manufacturers Celotex and Kingspan. Both used large-scale test passes - which only justified the use of their product in the precise system tested - to suggest their material could be used on high rise buildings in general.
The report was highly critical of the BRE’s role in the process - saying it was too close to its clients and that its staff offered too much advice to help them pass tests rather than providing a robust and scientific testing environment.
Celotex, which ultimately supplied most of the insulation used on Grenfell, failed its first attempt to pass the large-scale test. Its second passed, but with the addition of fire resisting boards near key temperature monitors which helped prevent the external cladding from cracking. These boards were never disclosed in the official report of the test.
A critical question has been whether or not the BRE’s staff (particularly burn hall manager Phil Clark) knew whether or not this was going on. Celotex’s witnesses said he did. He denied it.
The report found robustly that he did. The panel said they were “satisfied that Mr Clark was aware of the design… and the reasons for it”.
They went further to say that this individual failure was part of a wider culture at the BRE, which it said had “by degrees lost sight of the importance of maintaining a proper distance between itself and clients and of the need for scientific rigour and independence”.
It criticised the firm’s processes for testing - and the absence of arrangements to closely monitor the systems being tested, and ensure they followed the same build up as described in the reports of the tests. It called this a “serious failure in its systems”, adding that it was these shortcomings which “enabled Celotex to manipulate the testing process”.
It added that its lack of clear “appropriate steps” surrounding relationships with clients meant its “employees were liable to be drawn into relationships with customers that undermined the independence, objectivity and rigour of their work”.
It also said that former managing director Dr Debbie Smith’s fear of discussing fire risks with another industry group “betrayed a desire to put BRE’s status in the industry and commercial position ahead of considerations of public safety”.
It said that much of the BRE’s work with both manufacturers was “marred by unprofessional conduct, inadequate practices, a lack of effective oversight, poor reporting and a lack of scientific rigour”.
What the BRE has said:
The BRE has been keen to stress in its various closing statements that if the cladding system ultimately used on Grenfell Tower had been tested against its standards, it would have failed - meaning the problem was more about non-compliance with the rules than any deficiency in the testing.
They have added that they were not the regulator of the insulation companies and had no power to oversee their behaviour or stop them marketing their products in the way they desired. With regard to government, they have been keen to emphasise that their role was simply to advise under the terms of the contract and any decisions sat with the officials and ministers in the department - not the BRE.
Other matters of interest:
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the focus on competence in improving safety after Grenfell, and how that risked missing a wider picture. This led to a reader comment (via email) about the below schematic which riffs on the ‘triangle of fire’ (fuel, oxygen and heat - for those who don’t remember their GCSE physics). “The opposite of the triangle of fire was the triangle of fire safety and that you needed the right blend of regulation, enforcement and competence. If any of these fall - you’ll get fires,” said reader commented - thereby summarising a 1,500 word Substack post in a single sentence (and diagram, which I share below):
Construction sector whistleblowing organisation CROSS issued its first ‘red alert’ safety report since 2022 last week, raising concern about the issue of remediation works to buildings with dangerous cladding causing blockages to smoke ventilation. The report is here and is required reading for anyone engaged in this sort of work.
Social media algorithms downplay Substack links, but if you think this would be useful to others, please do forward the email!
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.