Behailu Kebede, a cab driver who had lived in Grenfell Tower in London for 25 years, was awoken at 12.54am by the sound of the fire alarm in his fourth-floor flat on June 14th, 2017, and found smoke billowing from behind the fridge-freezer in his kitchen.
The then 45-year-old Ethiopian native immediately dialled 999 and the first firefighters arrived at the social housing block in north Kensington, one of the most affluent areas of west London, within five minutes.
It would take them a further 15 minutes to enter the kitchen of his rented home – flat 16. But by that stage the fire had already broken out into the exterior cladding of the 24-storey building and was rapidly climbing the east facade. The inferno would envelop the building in less than three hours, and ultimately claim the lives of 72 people.
The chair of an inquiry set up two months after the fire, retired judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick, made it clear in his first report on the disaster, published in late 2019, that Kebede bore no blame for the disaster that was started by an electrical fault.
“I have not been able to establish the precise nature of the fault in the fridge‑freezer, but consider that to be of less importance than establishing how the failure of a common domestic appliance could have had such disastrous consequences,” he wrote in the report.
The final report, stretching to almost 1,700 pages and published on Wednesday across seven volumes, tackled the more important question, concluding that the disaster was the result of “decades of failure by central government and other bodies in positions of responsibility in the construction industry to look carefully into the danger of incorporating combustible materials into the external walls of high-rise residential buildings”.
It also levelled blame at the local authority of Kensington and Chelsea, which owned the tower block, regulatory groups, and an ill-prepared fire brigade for years of inaction over fire safety in high-rise blocks.
Rydon, the main build contractor for the Grenfell refurbishment, “gave inadequate thought to fire safety, to which it displayed a casual attitude throughout the project”, the report said. Architectural firm Studio E, responsible for the design of the external wall and choice of materials, “failed to recognise” the chosen cladding was dangerous.
But Moore-Bick reserved particular censure for the companies whose products were used on a refurbishment, completed in 2016, for a culture of “incompetence and, in many cases, by calculated dishonesty and greed” as they marketed combustible cladding materials as safe.
These included: a unit of US metals giant Arconic, whose plastic-cored aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding panels were used for the outer layer of the tower’s facade system; Celotex, a UK provider of most of the insulation boards – called RS5000 – used behind the cladding panels; and Cavan-based Kingspan, whose Kooltherm K15 insulation board was used for 5 per cent of insulation layer.
The report said Arconic had long been aware that the type of ACM panels used on the project were much more combustible than another form of panels it manufactured – but was “determined to exploit what it saw as weak regulatory regimes” in the UK and elsewhere to continue to sell the product.
Celotex, owned at the time of the Grenfell refurbishment by French multinational Saint-Gobain, “embarked on a dishonest scheme to mislead its customers and the wider market” by using a fire-resistant chemical compound on the boards during fire tests to ensure they passed, the report said.
Kingspan, a business founded by Eugene Murtagh almost 60 years ago in a yard behind his family pub in Kingscourt, Co Cavan, and now led by is son Gene, is mentioned 631 times in the final report.
The Irish group may have been unaware contractors on the Grenfell Tower used its K15 panels for a small part of the insulation when there were supply problems with Celotex’s boards, the product specified by those responsible for the refurbishment.
But the inquiry heard that K15 passed a fire safety test in 2005 when it was placed behind non-combustible cladding. That meant the product should only have been used in high-rise buildings with this type of tested cladding. However, it was marketed for general use on high-rises.
The inquiry concluded that Arconic’s ACM cladding was primarily responsible for the rate and extent of fire spread, and that the combustibility of the Celotex and Kingspan insulation within the facade system made no material difference.
But the use of the Celotex and Kingspan insulation boards on high-rise buildings at the time was based on false claims by the companies.
“As Kingspan knew, K15 could not honestly be sold as suitable for use in the external walls of buildings over 18 metres in height generally, but that is what it had succeeded in doing for many years,” the report said.
New version
Meanwhile, Kingspan started selling a new version of K15 from September 2006, which was “without question a different product from what it had previously been selling”, it added.
However, Kingspan concealed from UK construction product certification officials at the British Board of Agrément (BBA) that the K15 boards it was selling on the basis of certification secured in 2008 was different from the product used for the 2005 fire safety test.
“The story of the development and marketing of K15 for use on buildings of over 18 metres in height between 2006 and 2019 is one of deeply entrenched and persistent dishonesty on the part of Kingspan in pursuit of commercial gain coupled with a complete disregard for fire safety,” the report concluded.
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Moore-Bick also highlighted how Kingspan’s creation and domination of the insulation market for high-rises with K15 in the UK had, in fact, prompted Celetox to embark on its own dishonest scheme to play catch-up.
Ivor Meredith, a former technical project manager with Kingspan’s insulation business in the UK, told the inquiry that Kingspan began in 2007 to write “letters of suitability” to customers for the use of K15 on high-rise buildings.
“Tests performed in 2007 and 2008 on systems incorporating the then current form of K15 were disastrous, but Kingspan did not withdraw the product from the market, despite its own concerns about its fire performance,” the inquiry report said.
The inquiry uncovered numerous internal Kingspan documents between 2006 and 2009 revealing discussions about its inability to secure a top British fire resistance rating for the new K15 product, despite repeated efforts. These were widely circulated among technical staff, including managers Malcolm Rochefort and Philip Heath. Yet Kingspan continued to claim externally it achieved that classification.
The inquiry also heard in December 2020 of an email exchange between two Kingspan employees in 2016 – a year before the Grenfell disaster – in which they joked about how claims over the safety of K15 were “all lies”.
Kingspan succeeded in obtaining a certificate in 2009 from the Local Authority Building Control (LABC) in the UK “that contained false statements about K15 and supported its use generally on buildings over 18 meters in height”, the report said. Kingspan relied on that certificate for many years to sell the product.
Internal
The deceit was also internal. In July 2008, Rochefort, Heath and Meredith crafted a carefully worded response after being questioned by staff at another group division, Kingspan Off-Site, about the bad performance of the new K15 technology in a fire test. They claimed surprise and suggested potential causes of the problem.
Heath sent an email to a colleague after the response was sent to Kingspan Off-Site, in which he said, “I’m spinning so much I’m dizzy”.
Meredith, who was sacked in 2015 and had, the inquiry heard, a serious drug habit during his time at Kingspan, was worried by July 2008 about the performance of K15 in fire tests and made “repeated and strongly worded attempts to make [this] clear to his managers”. It fell on deaf ears.
He wasn’t alone. After a facade engineering company called Wintech Group began asking awkward questions in 2006 about the suitability of K15 for high-rise buildings, Heath wrote to a colleague saying, “Wintech can go f#ck themselves, and if they are not careful we’ll sue the a#se of them”.
When consultants Bowmer & Kirkland raised similar concerns in 2008, Heath messaged a friend. ‘[I] think Bowmer & Kirkland are getting me confused with someone who gives a dam (sic),” he wrote.
Kingspan has previously said the correspondence between a small number of employees “containing wholly unacceptable sentiments about fire safety” was “isolated behaviour” and not reflective of the group’s “core values and culture”.
Still, the reputational fallout has played out over years amid a “drip-drip” of embarrassing revelations during the inquiry, culminating in scathing references to it in the final report.
In December 2021, Kingspan was forced to back out of a sponsorship deal with Formula 1 team Mercedes – days after it was agreed – following an outcry from survivors of the Grenfell disaster and UK politicians that it amounted to little more than sports-washing.
Ulster Rugby has also faced calls in recent years from the then UK housing minister Michael Gove and the Grenfell United pressure group, made up of the families of victims and survivors of the fire, to end its contract with Kingspan. Ulster Rugby said last October it was carrying out a “major review” of the deal in light of the inquiry.
It announced early this year the deal – covering sponsorship of the team’s jerseys and the naming rights to the Kingspan Stadium in Belfast – will end on a phased basis by June 2025.
A spokeswoman for Cavan GAA declined to comment on its almost 30-year sponsorship by Kingspan, which currently includes the county’s shirts and the naming rights over its home ground, Kingspan Breffni Park.
Management agencies for Kingspan-sponsored golfers Shane Lowry and Cavan’s Leona Maguire did not respond to efforts to secure comment.
Kingspan’s current position is that K15 can be retained in high-rise cladding systems – subject to the entire systems being subject to, and passing, a comprehensive BS 8414 test.
The group says it has a suite of successful large-scale BS 8414 tests, commissioned by itself, of cladding systems that use K15. None involve the ACM panels used on Grenfell. Combustible insulation – including K15 – is no longer allowed in the UK in buildings above 11 or 18 meters, depending on the region.
Review
In early 2021, Kingspan commissioned law firm Eversheds Sutherland to carry out a review of its UK insulation board business in light of the disaster. It said an audit carried out earlier this year of the firm’s recommendations – including enhanced staff code of conduct training, making accountability for risk management and safety a responsibility for every employee, and improved board oversight – have been implemented.
Kingspan’s former managing director of its insulation boards division, Peter Wilson, retired early at the end of 2020. The group said it was “a step of accountability”, despite no finding of wrongdoing against him, implied or actual, by either the inquiry or the company.
Meanwhile, a company spokesman said that “none of those who Kingspan believes engaged in misconduct remain with the business”.
UK police has 58 people and 19 firms and organisations under investigation, but added this week that the first potential charges are likely to take a further 12 to18 months.
British prime minister Keir Starmer vowed on Wednesday to ban companies involved in failings that led to the Grenfell tragedy from future government contracts. It is understood that state contracts are not a material part of Kingspan’s UK business.
Kingspan was part of a group that agreed a total £150 million (€178 million) out-of-court settlement to survivors and bereaved relatives of Grenfell victims last year. It reportedly made up £4 million of the total, the smallest of eight parties involved.
Some 4,300 tall residential buildings in the UK have been identified since the fire as needing cladding remediation. About half have been completed. Kingspan says it has responded to inquires into more than 170 projects in which K15 may have been used. A spokesman declined to say how much it has paid out.
The company has also publicly said it would contribute to an industry-wide levy. However, the sector’s representative body, the Construction Products Association, has successfully resisted such a move to date.
Instead, housebuilders and developers have borne the brunt of redress, with levies and special taxes imposed in recent years that are expected to raise billions over a decade.
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