‘The interests of people who live in the affected buildings must not take second place’

The deaths of 72 people at Grenfell Tower in 2017 were avoidable.

The problem with the cladding installed at Grenfell was known across the world, long before its installation. In the UK there was strong pressure from the All Party Parliamentary Group on Fire Safety and fire industry representatives to act on that and associated risks.

In spite of that pressure, in 2014 the then minister Lib Dem Stephen Williams in the Conservative coalition government, said: “I have neither seen nor heard anything that suggests the consideration of these specific potential changes is urgent and I am not willing to disrupt the work of this department by asking that these matters are brought forward.”

He was one of a number of ministers who failed to heed the warnings. In 2016 combustible cladding was installed on the exterior of Grenfell Tower and in 2017 the tower caught fire.

As a safety professional for the last twenty five years, I understand how shoddy building practices have meant that as many as 1.3 million homes, or five per cent, of the UK population are now stuck with homes with serious defects.

This is often cladding that makes those homes unsafe and can risk the bankruptcy of their owners, through no fault of their own. In Bristol, eight high rise buildings were fitted with the same cladding that was in place on Grenfell Tower, and many low rise buildings are also affected.

Jerome Thomas, Green Party candidate for WECA mayor and safety practitioner, with Fraser Bridgeford of Bristol Cladding Action Group in front of one of the affected Bristol lower-rise buildings with problem cladding. Photo: Jerome Thomas

Meanwhile, the building industry reaps record profits, with the top five house builders in the UK earning £9bn of profit in the four years following the Grenfell fire, and in the 2019 election the building and property industry contributing 60 per cent of the £19m of donations that the Conservatives received.

The Grenfell fire and subsequent inquiry has revealed what so many safety professionals have known for years. That Conservative and Liberal deregulation agenda has had a catastrophic impact on the safety of new homes and flats and everything else has taken second place to the profits of the building and property companies and building at the cheapest cost.

This trust in the property and construction industry to police themselves has been misplaced. The evidence in the Grenfell inquiry reveals that the cladding and insulation manufacturers knew their products were unsafe, and knowingly misled customers about their safety performance.

In a well-regulated country, government sets good standards for the building industry and then monitors whether building is taking place to those standards.

In the UK, successive governments have failed to set adequate building standards and the regime of financial austerity removed from local authorities and Government departments the funds they needed to make sure that existing standards were being followed. Far from being followed, they were being recklessly ignored, putting the safety of over a million people at risk.

Cladding was removed from The Courtrooms soon after the Grenfell fire. More widely, the issue remains prevalent. Photo: Bristol24/7

William Martin, a junior doctor and co-founder of the UK Cladding Action Group, discovered that no firebreaks existed behind the exterior walls in his high-rise development in Sheffield. Along with other leaseholders in his building, he now faces a huge potential bill.

Quoted in the Financial Times he said: “There is simply no excuse for not putting firebreaks in or checking they were present,” he says. “It was the law. Essentially we bought the flats on the basis of false pretences.”

How to fix the problem of the unsafe properties and give people living in these properties a way forward? Bob Neill MP says: “If there is a systemic failure, the Government should bear corporate responsibility.”

That means the Government should pay to fix the problems caused by their deregulation agenda. As well as the Government shouldering the burden, the building industry must not be allowed to profit from the misery and suffering that it has created – and fairer taxation of the sector is only likely to be possible with much stronger controls on corporate lobbying and much stricter limits on political donations.

The interests of people live in the affected buildings and the wider public must not take second place to the interests of political donors with the deepest pockets.

Jerome Thomas is a chartered member of the Institute of Occupational Safety and Health and Green Party candidate for WECA mayor.

Bristol24/7 and Watershed will host a hustings for the WECA mayoral candidates on Thursday, April 22 at 7pm

Main photo: Bristol Green Party

Read more: ‘End the cladding scandal once and for all’