Civil servant acknowledges failings with appoach of leaving designers and building-control bodies to figure out rules for themselves
Designers and building control bodies were expected to “work out for themselves” what an ambiguous passage in official fire-safety guidance was supposed to mean, the civil servant who was in charge of the rules has said.
Brian Martin told Tuesday’s hearing of the Grenfell Inquiry that he thought the approach was “okay” at the time but admitted that “it’s evident it didn’t work”.
Martin, who had been in charge of fire safety in buildings for 17 years by the time of the Grenfell Tower fire, was questioned yesterday on a key passage in the guidance which has become a central focus of the inquiry.
Rules written by Martin and his team in 2006 stated that “filler” materials in a cladding system needed to comply with the tough fire standard of ”limited combustibility”.
But the phrase, which was a last-minute addition to the guidance, had not been put out to consultation with the industry and there was no clear consensus on its definition.
它还位于一篇题为“绝缘材料/产品”的文章中，这意味着许多业内人士认为它只指绝缘产品，而不是覆板。
The inquiry has already heard that the passage led to a “ten-year legacy of misunderstanding” in the industry because of its ambiguity.
The government insisted in the wake of the Grenfell fire that the phrase also applied to the core of combustible cladding panels, including the plastic core of products such as ACM cladding – the type which was used on the west London tower and has been blamed for the rapid spread of flame during the 2017 blaze.
Martin said yesterday that his team had intended to get designers and building control bodies to think “broadly” about what elements of a cladding system needed to be of limited combustibility.
Counsel to the inquiry Richard Millett QC asked whether they were expected to “take this broad, portmanteau expression and just work out for themselves what fell within it”.
“Yes, I think to some extent that’s what we were trying to do, yes”, Martin replied.
A series of cladding fires in the Middle East in the years before the Grenfell fire had been discussed by Martin and his team.
The hearing was shown a December 2012 email about the Tamweel Tower fire in Dubai, which occurred the month before, in which Martin said: “Have you seen the video? It’s awesome.”
马丁在他的证人证词中说，他认为这种火灾“不应该发生在英国，只要(指导方针)被正确应用”。
Millett asked Martin if he thought the phrase “filler” was sufficiently well understood “universally across the piece, across industry, even though that phrase had never been subjected to any of the ordinary processes for change for guidance, no public consultation… the absence of a definition, absence of…scrutiny”.
“At the time I thought it was okay, yes”, Martin replied.
他还被问及如何理解这个短语不仅仅指绝缘产品。他说，文章中有一句话是“任何绝缘产品，填充材料”，这意味着填充材料不是绝缘产品。
“So why put it in under ‘Insulation Materials/Products’ as a heading?” Millett asked.
“I think because we thought that the ‘/Products’ meant things that weren’t insulation”, Martin said.
“How could you possibly have thought that?” Millett asked.
“我们当时也是这么想的。”马丁说。
Later, the inquiry was shown an email in October 2010 in which Martin said that putting a fire safety campaigner in charge of drafting the guidance wouldn’t “necessarily be in the best interests of UK Plc”.
He explained in the hearing that building safety policy needed to be balanced to account for added costs which might be created by the rules.
“What would be wrong with letting somebody… who had life safety as their absolute priority craft the regulation?” Millett asked.
“这个国家将会破产，”马丁说，并补充道:“我想，如果你把它发挥到极致，我们最终都会饿死……这是政府面临的政策难题……你需要平衡监管的成本与收益。”
“So death by fire or death by starvation and that’s for the government to choose between?” asked Millett.
“我认为没有人用这种方式谈论它，但这是原则。”马丁说。
The inquiry continues.
