Chancellor said inquiry into London blaze will ask if UK fire regulations are correct and whether they were complied with

The cladding used on Grenfell Tower, which has been widely blamed for spreading the blaze, is banned in the UK on buildings of that height, Philip Hammond has said.

The chancellor told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show: “My understanding is the cladding in question, this flammable cladding which is banned in Europe and the US, is also banned here.

“So there are two separate questions. One: are our regulations correct, do they permit the right kind of materials and ban the wrong kind of materials? The second question is: were they correctly complied with?



“That will be a subject that the inquiry will look at. It will also be a subject that the criminal investigation will be looking at.”

Grenfell Tower fire: cladding was banned in UK, says Hammond – live updates Read more

Hammond said a criminal investigation would examine whether building regulations had been breached when the block was refurbished, while the public inquiry set up by the government would also examine if rules had been broken.

He said it would be up to the inquiry to determine whether the regulations were properly drafted, and whether they were correctly enforced in this case.

Although Hammond said that the material used in the Grenfell Tower refurbishment, containing flammable polyethylene, was “banned” in the UK, a Treasury spokesman said later that what he meant was that it was banned for buildings of a certain height.

Hammond was referring to a statement issued by the department for communities at the end of last week when it was asked to clarify the legal position. It said: “Cladding using a composite aluminium panel with a polyethylene core would be non-compliant with current Building Regulations guidance. This material should not be used as cladding on buildings over 18m in height.”

John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, said that sprinklers should be installed in high-rise buildings like Grenfell Tower to minimise the chances of such a fire ever happening again.

Pointing out that he had been raising this issue in parliament for years, he told Sky News: “Whatever it costs, we need to get them installed.”

McDonnell said that, if necessary, the constraints on councils that limit what they could borrow should be relaxed to enable them to fund the work.

However, Hammond suggested in his BBC interview that putting sprinklers in tower blocks might not always be necessary.

“If the conclusion of a proper technical evaluation is that [fitting sprinklers] is the best way to deal with the problem, then of course. But my understanding is that the best advice is that retrofitting sprinklers may not always be the best technical way of ensuring fire safety in a building,” he said.

Fire safety: repeated calls for retrofitting sprinklers to high-rises were ignored Read more

However, the chancellor said ultimately the government would be guided by what the public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire recommended.

Ministers would ask for interim recommendations from the inquiry relatively soon, instead of waiting several years for a final report before taking action, he said. “If there is something that needs to be done to make buildings safe, then it will be done.

“The commitment that government should make, and I will make it now, is that when the inquiry produces its findings – and I don’t mean in years’ time, because we are going to ask them to produce interim findings – we will act on them.”

When it was put to him that the government had ignored a call to review building regulations relating to fire safety made by the coroner four years ago following the Lakanal House fire, Hammond said he did not accept that.

Pointing out that research and consultation had been commissioned, he said: “My assessment is that we have responded correctly and appropriately to those recommendations.”

But, ultimately, the public inquiry would decide whether the government had responded properly to the coroner’s recommendations, Hammond said.