Inquiry told he had ‘no knowledge’ of rapid fire spread and did not know panels were combustible

This article is more than 6 months old

This article is more than 6 months old

The architect of the Grenfell Tower refurbishment has admitted he did not read building regulations aimed at preventing cladding fires and had no idea that panels used to insulate buildings could be combustible.

Bruce Sounes, the project architect on the council block where 72 people died in June 2017, told the public inquiry into the disaster that he did not know that aluminium panels could melt and spread flames and had no idea cladding had previously caught fire on buildings in the UK and Dubai, including at Lakanal House in Southwark in 2009, where six people died.

Under cross-examination by Kate Grange QC, counsel to the inquiry, Sounes said that during the Grenfell Tower refurbishment he did not familiarise himself with regulations demanding external walls must adequately resist the spread of fire.

As a result, he did not see a diagram in building regulations guidance showing how external wall systems on buildings of different heights must meet safety rules, information about a cladding fire at the Garnock Court housing block in Scotland in 1999 and a diagram showing how fires could spread in high-rise apartment buildings.

Sounes said he had “no knowledge” of rapid fire spread and had not read regulatory guidance about how to design cavity barriers, features that were intended to stop fire spread and which failed at Grenfell.

Nevertheless, his firm, Studio E Architects, had included in a list of services to its client a promise to “ensure that all designs comply with the relevant statutory requirements”. Sounes told the inquiry it was the responsibility of the council’s building control department to check on compliance and other expert consultants were expected to advise.

The inquiry also heard that Studio E manipulated its fees to avoid the contract being put out to open tender.

Timeline Key events since the Grenfell Tower fire Show Hide

The fire breaks out in the early hours of the morning, prompting a huge response from emergency services, who are unable to bring the fire under control or prevent a severe loss of life. The then Conservative prime minister, Theresa May, visits the scene and orders a full inquiry into the disaster, and the government promises that every family will be rehoused locally. The communities secretary, Sajid Javid, orders an emergency fire safety review of 4,000 tower blocks across Britain, and it will emerge that 120 tower blocks have combustible cladding. Scotland Yard launches a criminal investigation into the Grenfell fire. The chancellor, Philip Hammond, says the cladding used on Grenfell Tower was banned in the UK. The retired judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick is appointed to lead the public inquiry. Kensington and Chelsea council’s first meeting since the disaster is abandoned after the council fails in a bid to ban the media from attending. Survivors have their first official meeting with the police and coroner. The inquiry formally opens. As the final death toll is confirmed to be 71 people, it is revealed that hundreds of households are still living in hotels. In defensive testimony at the inquiry, London fire brigade commissioner Dany Cotton said she would not change anything about the way the brigade responded to the Grenfell disaster, provoking anger from both survivors and the bereaved. Grenfell survivors and the bereaved expressed frustration at Scotland Yard after they admitted no charges were likely until 2021. The public inquiry report concludes that fewer people would have died had the fire brigade been better prepared. Leader of the House of Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg is forced to apologise after stating that victims of Grenfell did not use "common sense" and leave the burning building. Grenfell cladding firm Arconic reveals it has spent £30 million on lawyers and advisors defending their role in the disaster. The second phase of the Grenfell Tower inquiry begins. Stacee Smith and Grace Mainwaring

Sounes said that, at the request of the tower’s landlord, Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO), he deferred charging some fees so the threshold that would have obliged the client on the council-owned block to issue an open tender was not met.

Under EU procurement rules, known as OJEU, which applied at the time, public works above a certain threshold have to be put out to open tender. Studio E has already admitted it would not have been selected for the job in competition because it lacked experience in high-rise housing or over-cladding works.

Neil Crawford, the Studio E designer who was the day-to-day contact for the contractor, was not a qualified architect, and Sounes, the lead architect, had not worked on a high-rise building and had no experience with polyethylene composite materials as a working architect.

The building caught fire on the fourth floor on 14 June 2017 and a blaze spread to the 24th floor in less than half an hour through the cladding system the architects had helped design, ultimately claiming 72 lives. The tenant management organisation (TMO) was set up by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the tower’s owner, to run the property.

The inquiry was shown a project meeting note written by Sounes on 24 July 2012 saying “the TMO would like ... the total fee up until stage D [a design phase] not exceeding £174k which is the OJEU threshold for requiring work to be tendered. This will probably mean deferring some fees.”

Three days later, Sounes proposed to Mark Anderson, the director of assets and regeneration at the TMO, “a 50% deferment of all stage D fees to keep the total stage D fee below £174k”.

Sounes said in his statement to the inquiry: “I understood that this limit was the maximum contract value permissible under EU procurement regulations, above which KCTMO would have to follow a compliant procurement process in selecting consultants. Such a process might involve advertising and tendering the opportunity publicly or using consultants from an approved framework list.”

The inquiry had earlier heard that in May 2012 when the consultants were told they were working on the job, Anderson had stressed: “We have a project to deliver within a very tight timescale and an even tighter budget.”

Under cross-examination by Grange, Sounes confirmed that at the time none of the Studio E architects had experience of over-cladding projects.

The chairman of the inquiry, Sir Martin Moore-Bick, asked Sounes: “Did you ever suggest to the TMO that because of the level of fees it ought to go out to tender?”

Sounes replied: “I’m afraid I don’t have the insight on the OJEU rules to take a view on what ought to have happened,” adding that he did not know who in the TMO made the decision.

By December 2012, Studio E had stopped invoicing because it had reached the OJEU threshold.

The inquiry continues.



