COINCIDING with last week’s closing of the 300-day inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire comes the publication of a damning and moving account of the events leading up to the entirely preventable disaster that claimed 72 lives, 17 of them children. A bonfire, a bonfire, a bonfire. David Cameron promised one as prime minister, as did Boris Johnson, as did Liz Truss when she ran for the highest office in the land. Conservative leaders come and go, but they all want a conflagration. Always of red tape, of course, the semi-mythical substance that is said to throttle business. The trouble is that, in the case of Grenfell Tower, it was human lives that burned. The 30-year pursuit of deregulation in the building industry demonstrably contributed to the killing of 72 people in their homes. It helped lead to the moment when a two-year-old boy died coughing and crying in his mother’s arms while she was on her phone to a firefighter, shortly before she too died.

I first wrote about the fire three days after it occurred, outraged by the Daily Mail headline, which blamed it on "misguided climate change targets." I wrote that it was not about green targets but was "an indictment of plastic and foam in construction." I also worried about the effect it would have on wood construction:Space, Rhythm & Light illuminates Kim Lim at the Hepworth Space, Rhythm & Light illuminates Kim Lim at the Hepworth So when a fridge on the fourth floor caught fire on 14 June 2017, and flames got out through the vinyl window, it wasn’t stopped by cavity barriers but shot up as if in a chimney. the ACM’s polyethylene core melted and burned hot enough to ignite the insulation. The fire spread up and melted the vinyl window frames of other units, filling them with toxic smoke and carbon monoxide. How architects can put together a business continuity plan How architects can put together a business continuity plan Grenfell didn’t have to happen,” Apps said. “This was a problem people were worried about—adding combustible materials onto the outside of buildings. And the book looks at how companies knew their cladding was deadly. “They knew what they were doing, but they were able to manipulate the regulatory regime,” Apps said. Show Me The Bodies is important reading to understand the failures and to remember the victims.

I read this book on recommendation from a relative, and I am glad I did. It took me longer to read than my average reading pace because some parts were incredibly emotional and heavy to get through. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month.Kingsolver has made the cut for political fiction with Demon Copperhead (Faber), also nominated for the Women’s Prize, while Azumah Nelson has been shortlisted for Small Worlds (Viking).

Renationalising bodies such as the Building Research Establishment, the National Health Building Council and the British Board of Agreement would prevent these regulators kneeling to big companies, as was the case for Grenfell. This way they may scrutinise their clients rather than worry about losing business. The intent at the design stage of this building was such that the staircases were not intended to be used as a mass escape route. The advice given to residents was that, in the event of a fire, the occupants should remain in their properties. The speed at which this fire spread would suggest that there has been a serious failure in the design and installation techniques employed." He claimed that since the 2004 test was to European standards, and different national categorisations could apply in England, the test was “a non-issue”. He said that since Arconic sold the panel in flat sheet form, for others to bend into the dangerous shape, a certificate it shared claiming a higher fire performance was in no way “misleading”. That since the cladding could be used safely in other buildings, those who designed the Grenfell Tower system were the ones who were really at fault. And that since the UK government had failed to tighten standards to objectively ban the sort of cladding Arconic sold, its actions in selling it in this country were “entirely lawful”. There is also the single staircase. This issue is sometimes overstated. One expert analysed the staircase and found that in normal conditions it was wide enough to accommodate the entire 293-person population of the tower, even if they entered simultaneously. The time it would have taken for an able-bodied person to descend under normal conditions from the very top of the tower was four minutes. This shows us the extraordinary difference a decision to evacuate the building before the stairwell became smoke-logged might have made.” Apps said the cladding “tells us something quite important about the country we live in”. From the rule of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, the aim was “minimum interference and maximum self-regulation” for the construction industry.

Grenfell by Steve McQueen

What we learned in the cross examinations that followed revealed that the problems extend beyond the construction industry to the heart of our state. How countless opportunities to learn from other fires here and in other parts of the world were lost and how government inaction led to fire regulations that made us an outlier in Europe, allowing the UK to become a dumping ground for sub-standard insulation. In an official culture of cost-cutting and eliminating as much red tape as possible, this sort of attitude was par for the course, and meant that the use of ACM cladding, which contained petroleum-derived plastic, went ahead in the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower. Residents’ concerns about the 2015 refurbishment were purposefully ignored, despite a residents’ blog warning of a “future major disaster”.