Sickening emails reveal Grenfell bosses joke ‘We are quids in!’
Sickening emails and text messages have revealed how Grenfell bosses admitted cladding would ‘burn’ in any fire, concealed vital information and ‘joked’ they were ‘quids in’ before the tragedy that claimed 72 lives.
The final report into the June 2017 disaster found that unsuitable cladding manufactured by French firm Arconic was the principle reason why flames shot up the entire tower but other elements, such as insulation from firms Celotex and Kingspan, also played a part.
It said fatalities were the result of ‘decades of failure’ by central government and the construction industry to act on the dangers of flammable cladding.
The inquiry’s chairman, Sir Martin Moore-Bick, ruled all 72 deaths were avoidable.
Today brings further grief and heartbreak for survivors and bereaved family members, with callous messages sent between those responsible for ensuring the safety of the tower block made public.
The deaths of 72 people were the result of ‘decades of failure’ and entirely avoidable, the inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire has found
Sir Martin pointed the finger at industry body the British Board of Agrement (BBA), who he accused of incompetence for failing to carry out proper checks
Arconic
The technical manager at cladding manufacturers Arconic was slammed by the inquiry after it was revealed she sent a message acknowledging the company was ‘not clean’ in 2010.
The panels from the firm were Reynobond aluminium composite material (ACM) rainscreen panels with a highly flammable polyethylene (PE) core.
In his first report for the public inquiry, chairman Sir Martin Moore-Bick concluded the cladding panels were the ‘principle reason’ why flames shot up the side of the 24-storey block.
He said the flammable core of the panels ‘acted as a source of fuel’ as the inferno raged out of control in a matter of minutes.
The inquiry heard that Arconic sought to sell its more flammable products – such as the Reynobond PE panels – to the UK when they were restricted in other countries.
Arconic had known for years that its PE products could be dangerous due to the combustibility of the material at its core.
In his first report for the public inquiry, chairman Sir Martin Moore-Bick concluded the cladding panels were the ‘principle reason’ why flames shot up the side of the 24-storey block
Grenfell Tower pictured the day after the fire, which killed 72 people and destroyed the entire building
Composite photograph showing how fire swept through Grenfell Tower in West London in 2017
The PE panels passed fire rating tests in 2005 when bolted to a building, but failed when bent to hang from a wall.
Arconic did not reveal details of the failed test, conducted in France, when it sought – and obtained – a certificate from the British Board of Agreement (BBA) for its cladding in 2008.
Internal emails about the failed fire test were damning. Claude Wehrle, Arconic’s technical manager, wrote in 2010 that it was ‘hard to make a note about this because we are not clean’.
Responding to the inquiry, Arconic said it was its subsidiary, Arconic Architectural Products SAS (AAP), which had supplied the material used for cladding in the tower’s refurbishment, and that it rejects ‘any claim that AAP sold an unsafe product’ and ‘did not conceal information from or mislead any certification body, customer, or the public’.
Kingspan
Bosses at insulation firm Kingspan are under fresh pressure today after it was revealed development director and technical manager Phillip Heath told an employee: ‘All we do is lie here’.
A £10 million renovation of the tower block in 2015 and 2016, managed by Rydon, had seen Kingspan insulation added.
The firm has previously claimed its insulation was one of multiple types of insulation used in the Grenfell tower, and that the decision was made ‘without its knowledge’.
The company said its product made up 5 percent of the insulation in the tower block and was used without its knowledge.
But the firm struggled to get its product to pass fire safety testing before ‘knowingly’ creating a ‘false market’ by manipulating test results, the inquiry found.
Phillip Heath sent messages saying he didn’t ‘give a damn’ about concerns over insulation and said a contractor firm could ‘go f*** itself’
Phillip Heath, Kingspan’s technical manager, sent this after contractors raised concerns in 2008 (spelling mistakes sic)
Kingspan relied on the results of a single cladding fire safety test performed in 2005, on a system whose components were not representative of a typical external wall, the report said, and found that the firm continued to rely on that test despite changing the composition of K15 in 2006.
It relied on testing only the ‘facer’ of the product, and not the entire insulation.
Further tests on systems incorporating K15 in the following two years were ‘disastrous’, the report said, but Kingspan did not withdraw the product from the market, ‘despite its own concerns about its fire performance’.
After consultants Bowmer & Kirkland raised concerns with Kingspan over the safety of its insulation in 2008, Heath messaged a friend and said: ‘[I] think Bowmer & Kirkland are getting me confused with someone who gives a dam [sic].
‘I’m trying to think of a way out of this one, imagine a fire running up this tower. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Any ideas?’
Shortly after, speaking to an employee about their concerns over the lack of success in safety tests, Heath said: ‘There are always inconsistencies in relation to fire tests.’
Forwarding the exchange onto Head of Compliance Gwyn Davies, Heath wrote: ‘I’m spinning so much I’m dizzy!!!’
Heath also responded to concerns from another contractor, Wintech, by telling colleagues: ‘Wintech can go f*** themselves and if they are not careful we will sue the a*** [off] them.’
People receive treatment at the scene of the Grenfell Tower fire in West London in June 2017
And in perhaps the most disturbing chain of messages, tech employee Arron Chalmers told fellow employee Peter Moss he knew the insulation did not pass fire tests.
Chalmers said: ‘[K15 insulation] Doesn’t actually get class 0 when we test the whole product tho LOL!’
Moss replied: ‘WHAT, We lied? Honest opinion now.’
Chalmers said: ‘Yeahhhh. Tested K15 as a whole – got class 1 [a worse rating]. Wheyy. lol ‘
Moss said : ‘Whey. S*** product. Scrap it.’
Chalmers added: ‘Yeah all lies mate,’ and ‘Alls [sic] we do is lie in here.’
And in a separate email in 2016, just a year before the blaze, Chalmers admitted it ‘does seem a bit of a cheat… claiming Class 0 just for a facer test, when as you said it’s meant to be product as placed on the market.’
Another employee involved in the email chain then responded: ‘Perhaps it would be better if you had a meeting to discuss this verbally.’
The report found that the company made a ‘false claim’ its product could be used in any part of the building safely.
In 2009, Kingspan obtained a certificate that ‘contained false statements about K15’, the report said, and on which it relied ‘for many years to sell the product’, adding that it made a ‘calculated decision’ to use the certificate to ‘mask, or distract from, the absence of supporting test evidence’.
The report said Kingspan ‘cynically exploited’ the industry’s lack of detailed knowledge about insulation and cladding fire safety tests, and ‘relied on the fact that an unsuspecting market was very likely to rely on its own claim about the product’.
Responding to the report, Kingspan said it had ‘long acknowledged the wholly unacceptable historical failings that occurred in part of our UK insulation business’ but said these were ‘in no way reflective of how we conduct ourselves as a group, then or now’.
It said it remains ‘committed to playing a leading role in providing safe and sustainable building solutions, including continuing to work with government and industry partners’.
Celotex
French-owned insulation company Celotex was responsible for most of the insulation used in the Grenfell Tower during refurbishment.
It was revealed in the inquiry’s report today that the company knew its product would be highly flammable in the case of a fire.
One email from 2013 found an employee wondering: ‘Do we take the view that our product realistically shouldn’t be used behind most cladding panels because in the event of a fire it would burn?’
Then in 2017, Product Manager Deborah Berger was alerted by colleagues that a fire test had been ‘rigged’ in order to play down its safety issues.
Reading the report of the test, and noticing that fire-retardant panels had been set up to try and reduce the impact of flames on their product, Ms Berger wrote ‘WTF?’ in the margins.
Within minutes much of the block was well alight due to a combination of building failures
Exhausted firefighters rest at the scene of the huge blaze at Grenfell Tower in June 2017 the morning after the blaze
The 72 victims of the Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017 are pictured as follows – (top row left to right) Mohammad Al-Haj Ali, Ya-Haddy Sisi Saye, also known as Khadija Saye, Anthony Disson, Khadija Khalloufi, Mary Mendy, Isaac Paulos, Sheila, Gloria Trevisan, Marco Gottardi, (second row left to right) Berkti Haftom, Ali Yarwar Jafari, Majorie Vital, Yahya Hashim, Hamid Kani, Jessica Urbano Ramirez, Zainab Deen, Nura Jemal, Jeremiah Deen, (third row left to right) Yasin El-Wahabi, Firdaws Hashim, Hashim Kedir, Debbie Lamprell, Ernie Vital, Sakina Afrasehabi, Denis Mur-phy, Raymond ‘Moses’ Bernard, Biruk Haftom, (fouth row left to right) Yaqub Hashim, Mehdi El-Wahabi, Ligaya Moore, Nur Huda El-Wahabi, Victoria King, Mo-hammed Amied Neda, Maria del Pilar Burton, Hesham Rahman, Gary Maunders, (fifth row left to right) Alexandra Atala, Vincent Chiejina, Steve Power, Rania Ibrahim, Fethia Hassan, Hania Hassan, Fathia Ahmed Elsanousi, Abufras Ibrahim (silhouette), Isra Ibrahim (silhouette), (sixth row left to right) Mariem Elgwahry, Eslah Elgwahry (silhouette), Mohamednur Tuccu, Amal Ahmedin, Amaya Tuccu-Ahmedin, Amna Mahmud Idris, Abdeslam Sebbar (silhouette) , Joseph Daniels (silhouette), Logan Gomes, (seventh row left to right) Omar Belkadi, Farah Hamdan, Malak Belkadi (sil-houette), Leena Belkadi (silhouette), Abdulaziz El-Wahabi, Faouzia El-Wahabi, Fatemeh Afrasiabi, Kamru Miah, Rabeya Begum, (eighth row left to right) Mohammed Hamid, Mohammed Hanif, Husna Begum, Bassem Choukair, Nadia Choucair, Mierna Choucair, Fatima Choucair, Zainab Choucair and Sirria Choucair
The chard remains of Grenfell Tower the morning after the fire, as firefighters continued to deal with small blazes inside
She told the inquiry she had reported her concerns to managers – but the report, making no reference to the panels, remained unchanged.
Celotex’s product Rs5000 was one of the insulation components used in the Grenfell Tower rainscreen cladding system and its TB4000 insulation was used to fill gaps in the window surrounds during the refurbishment of the tower.
The inquiry’s final report concluded that it had ’embarked on a dishonest scheme to mislead its customers and the wider market’ in an attempt to break into a market which had been dominated by Kingspan.
In 2014 Celotex tested ‘with the complicity of BRE (Building Research Establishment)’ a system incorporating RS5000 which contained ‘two sets of fire-resistant magnesium oxide boards placed in critical positions to ensure that it passed’.
In its response, Celotex said it had ‘reviewed and improved process controls, quality management and the approach to marketing within the Celotex business to meet industry best practice’.
Rydon
Bosses at lead contractors for Grenfell’s disastrous renovation Rydon gleefully told each other ‘We are quids in!’.
The firm had been drafted in because it was a cheaper option than original contractors Leadbitter.
Soon after being appointed to the project, Rydon switched the panels to be installed on the outside of the tower from zinc to a cheaper aliminium version, which would ultimately go up in flames.
Cladding contractor Harley Facades told Rydon the switch could make savings of £419,627 or £576,973.
But Rydon told council officials the savings would instead be £293,368 or £376,175.
An email from Zak Maynard, Rydon’s commercial manager, in 2014, boasted the company was ‘quids in!’. He later claimed in the inquiry he had been ‘joking’.
The Grenfell Tower fire in West London in June 2017 left 72 people dead in a shocking tragedy
Members of the Grenfell community attend a silent walk to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the tower block fire in London, Britain, 14 June 2024
Asked about the discrepancy, Simon Lawrence, contracts manager at Rydon, told the inquiry: ‘I would suggest by that, although not my area of expertise, that Rydon took some of the saving for themselves.’
Sir Martin said in his final report that Rydon was as culpable as the manufacturers because of its ‘casual attitude’ throughout the project, and because it gave ‘inadequate thought to fire safety’.
The report added that Rydon ‘saw its role as as little more than the conductor of a large and varied orchestra’, and had not employed anyone with the ‘knowledge and skills required to design or carry out the refurbishment’.
The report found Rydon was ‘ill-equipped to oversee the work of its sub-contractors and consultants’ and that the firm and others appeared to have ‘assumed that someone else was, or should be, taking responsibility for critical decisions, such as the choice of insulation, rainscreen panels and other materials’.
Harley Facades
Employees at cladding contractor Harley Facades also knew cladding installed on the tower during refurbishment would burn quickly, adding there was ‘no point’ in attempting to stop fire.
An email exchanged between two senior employees of Harley Facades in March 2015 showed manager Daniel Anketell-Jones, discussing measures in relation to the aluminium composite (ACM) panels with Ray Bailey, a director.
Mr Bayley had appointed his 25-year-old son as Harley Facades’s project manager despite having little experience.
Anketell-Jones said: ‘There is no point in ‘fire stopping’, as we all know; the ACM will be gone rather quickly in a fire! The whole point is to stop ‘unseen’ fire spreading in the cavity.’
Sir Martin’s final report said Harley Facades ‘failed in many respects to meet the standards’ expected of it.
He said the firm ‘did not concern itself sufficiently with fire safety at any stage of the refurbishment’.
He said it, too, ‘bears a significant degree of responsibility for the fire’.
