Housing Secretary Michael Gove has threatened “severe consequences” if the companies responsible for producing the flammable cladding and insulation panels involved in the Grenfell Tower fire do not come up with a financial support package.
The fire in the West London suburb of North Kensington in June, 2017 killed 72 people.
A public inquiry has heard the blaze began in a refrigerator in a fourth-floor flat, but spread quickly up the side of the 24-storey building. This was possible because the aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding panels and insulation panels that had been fitted to the exterior of the tower as part of a renovation programme in 2016 were flammable.
After the fire, then-Prime Minister Theresa May ordered that cladding on hundreds of tower blocks across the country be tested and removed if found to be flammable, but progress has been slow—and largely because of the costs involved.
The government has funded most of the cost of removing cladding from council and housing association blocks, but many leaseholders and private landlords are bearing the cost for hundreds of other towers.
The government believes that manufacturers Kingspan, Arconic, and Saint-Gobain should stump up money to pay for the removal of the cladding. On Thursday, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) confirmed that Gove had written to the companies’ shareholders asking them to use their “position of influence” to get the firms to “engage constructively in helping us reach a just resolution for all concerned.”
The main institutional investors involved are Blackrock, Vanguard, Fidelity Management and Research, and the Norwegian central bank, Norges Bank.
A DLUHC spokesman said the shareholders were told that if a financial package was not forthcoming, “the consequences for that firm are likely to be severe.”
Gove Says Things Could Get ‘Extremely Uncomfortable’
The housing secretary said a legal solution would make the cladding companies “extremely uncomfortable.”“Today, we ask responsible investors to use their influence to encourage these companies to come forward immediately with a comprehensive financial package for remediation work.
“It cannot be right that cladding companies continue to profit whilst so many innocent, hardworking people face financial hardship and misery. To those cladding companies who fail to do the right thing: you will face severe consequences and I will use all commercial and legal tools available to me to ensure you take responsibility,” Gove wrote.
The DLUHC also said 46 firms have now signed up to post-Grenfell building safety contracts.
Gove is also considering the findings of a review of the testing regime for construction products, commissioned after the Grenfell inquiry and carried out by Paul Morrell and Anneliese Day KC.
‘A Long Way from Justice’
“Reform of the construction products sector is vital and long overdue. But we are still a long way from justice—true justice for Grenfell’s bereaved, survivors, and residents and for innocent leaseholders trapped in unsafe buildings across the country,” the End Our Cladding Scandal campaign group said in a statement.Making his closing statement at the end of the second and final phase of the inquiry, Khan said: “Our clients truly, truly hope that this inquiry does not prove to be another administrative formality, a box-ticking exercise.”
Adrian Williamson KC, a lawyer who represented other Grenfell victims, told the inquiry: “This is not just a story of incompetence or worse on the past of individuals and companies. They were all operating within a culture which did not encourage either competence or honesty, and a market and a system in which there was a headlong race to the bottom.”
Kingspan, Arconic, and Saint-Gobain have all denied they bear corporate responsibility for the Grenfell fire.
The inquiry was set up by the then-Prime Minister Theresa May and was conducted in parallel with a criminal investigation by the Metropolitan Police, which could lead to criminal charges of manslaughter or corporate manslaughter.
