Building control body denies it took ‘benevolent’ attitude to Kingspan because it was in financial trouble

A building control body has denied that it took a “benevolent” attitude towards a combustible cladding product used on Grenfell Tower because it was facing financial difficulties.

Local Authority Building Control (LABC) head of education David Ewing said there was “very little in terms of profit” resulting from the body’s decision to repeatedly issue misleading certificates for Kingspan’s K15 insulation.

Monday’s hearing of the Grenfell Inquiry was shown emails from Ewing in 2014 in which he told colleagues that Kingspan was seeking certificates for 30 of its products.

His colleague Cathal Brennan replied: “We’ll save this failing company yet! Seriously, that’s really good news”, while Lorna Stimpson, now the LABC’s chief executive, wrote “Fanbloodytastic!!!!!”.

Asked why his colleagues had responded in this way, Ewing denied that the body was in financial trouble but said it was “never making any money” from a “registered details” scheme for product certificates.

The purpose of the scheme was to offer in-depth evaluation by LABC teams of certified products with the information necessary to consider them against building regulations.

Ewing said it was helpful for manufacturers because it provided them with a “consistency of approach” by local authorities in their assessments of products’ compliance.

Inquiry counsel Kate Grange QC asked if the reason he was so “benevolent” towards Kingspan was that the LABC needed the work and the firm’s endorsement of the scheme as the market leader.

Ewing admitted that there was “certainly a bit of kudos” to having Kingspan on the scheme but said there was “very little in terms of any profits that were being made out of doing the whole venture”.

The inquiry has already heard how the LABC’s certificates for K15 wrongly claimed the product could be considered a material of “limited combustibility” and suggested that it was fit for use in a wide range of cladding systems, rather than the single system covered by its fire test.

Witnesses from the firm have admitted that the certificates, which were used by Kingspan as a key element in its marketing material, were inaccurate.

在2017年格伦费尔火灾发生前，K15在保温材料市场占据主导地位，但它从未被指定用于大楼的翻新，但在导致72人丧生的灾难发生后，它被发现包含在大楼的包层系统中。

Last week the inquiry heard how the LABC had sought alucrative sponsorship deal with Kingspan，该公司通过“推荐”向客户提供“直接服务”。

The LABC’s former director of technical policy Barry Turner had said that the body needed income as it was not being provided by either the government or from local authorities.

Yesterday, Ewing denied that Brennan’s comments suggested the work offered by Kingspan was “pretty significant” for the company and said the email was “a bit of humour”.

在这封邮件发出的时候，另一个建筑控制机构——国家房屋建筑委员会(NHBC)已经对K15向LABC颁发的证书表示了担忧。

The inquiry heard last week that NHBC risk teams had been “jumping up and down” because several large sites were “all using the material outside of the tested specification”.

LABC还被告知，K15的火焰测试显示，在实验室火焰停止后，它还继续燃烧了20分钟。

格兰奇问尤因:“令人困惑的事情之一是，就在你意识到Kingspan关于其K15产品的声明存在一些相当严重的担忧时，而不是与Kingspan就这些问题进行严肃的对话时，你似乎主要是在讨论Kingspan的额外工作。

“That’s puzzling, do you accept, looking at it now?”

Ewing replied: “In terms of the emails that you’ve shown me, I accept what you’re saying, but from my perspective, that was never the case.

“I suppose we could argue that Kingspan [were] sweetening us up by offering us the additional work.

“And that might well have been the case, to try and take some pressure off the fire testing side of it. But, I suppose naively, I didn’t see that.”

>> Also read:Building control body sought sponsorship deal with Kingspan, Grenfell Inquiry hears

>> Also read:Concealment of cladding dangers ‘one of the major scandals of our time’, Grenfell Inquiry hears

Grange then asked Ewing if he thought he had been “played” by Kingspan, to which he replied: “I think we were. We were played all the way along, both Kingspan and Celotex.”

Celotex是另一家为格伦费尔塔提供绝缘材料的产品制造商。去年，调查听取了尤因公司如何“利用”尤因公司对“0级”防火等级的明显混淆，以获得LABC证书，使其产品可以用于高层建筑。

This week is the inquiry’s last week of hearings before it resumes on January 24. The NHBC will be giving evidence today, Wednesday and Thursday.

The inquiry continues.