Grenfell cladding

What with Covid and Brexit we have all moved on, and Grenfell seems like yesterday’s news. Which is probably why there weren’t riots in the streets after Ray Bailer gave his evidence to the Grenfell enquiry. He’s the director of Harley Facades, the firm responsible for recladding Grenfell Tower. but he doesn’t, apparently, bear the “ultimate liability” for what happened, even though there’s a letter which says his firm was “responsible for design and compliances.”

He says the suppliers were at fault, and they should have told him there were problems, and alerted him to serious cladding fires in Dubai in 2015. He just assumed that the “new super-duper insulation products were safe”, and yes, he had read approved document B of the building regulations, relating to fire safety. He read them thoroughly, ten years ago.

Were there alternatives that might have been used. There were, but “price and aesthetics were the dominant factor…I would prefer to stick to Reynobound if poss. Nothing wrong with Alucobond, of course, but I’m not sure we can manage the costs so well if we go that route!!” His exclamation marks, and they’re entirely justified. You could have a neater encapsulation of selfish, blinkered, deadly short-sightedness. That’s how people get killed.