Peter Apps
@PeteApps
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Inside Housing + freelance elsewhere. Author of Orwell Prize winning Show Me The Bodies - How We Let Grenfell Happen.
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The fifth anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire is a week today.
The shocking revelations from the inquiry have been heard by too few. So here is a thread which I will update over the next few days with some of the things you may have missed:
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Your regular reminder that 81% of new social housing lettings go to white British tenants and 90% go to UK nationals. At a dangerous political moment, please don't let the right establish one of their favourite narratives (lies): that immigrants get all the council housing.
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At the end of his evidence, Pickles refers to "the nameless, I think its 96 people who were killed in the Grenfell fire. I think it's them we should think about when we're arguing the toss".
There were 72 deaths at Grenfell. None of them were nameless.
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Tomorrow is the sixth anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire.
Our new research shows that 84% of social housing high rises still don't have sprinklers and 88% don't have block-wide fire alarms.
What happened to 'never again'?
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🚨 NEW LEAKED DOCUMENT 🚨
I've obtained a previously unreleased document which reveals Grenfell insulation manufacturer Saint Gobain had research showing its product released high levels of toxic smoke 18 months before fire:
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One of the saddest indictments of this country I can think of is that the social reforms we need are written by coroners
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I don't understand the thinking of universities in this A-level debacle. If someone nailed an entrance interview, got predicted straight As and offered a place at a great uni, what is the logic in suddenly rejecting them based on an exam they didn't take?
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Tomorrow, a civil servant called Brian Martin begins his evidence to the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
His name won't be a familiar to most people. But in this story, he is a key player. Let me explain some of the reasons why:
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The Home Office will not require owners of high rise buildings to prepare evacuation plans, or make arrangements for disabled residents to escape, abandoning a core recommendation of the Grenfell Inquiry weeks before the fifth anniversary of the fire
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As mayor of London, Boris Johnson pushed through a package of fire service cuts, despite their rejection by the LFB's governing body. He told an assembly member who challenged him over this to "get stuffed"
Today marks five years since the Grenfell Tower fire took the lives of 72 people.
My thoughts are with the survivors, those who lost loved ones and the wider community.
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Andrew Bridgen MP on Rees Mogg's Grenfell comments:
"Jacob is not from that background [Grenfell Tower]. He is very, very well educated."
His assumption that people are uneducated simply because they live in a tower block is both outrageous and very revealing.
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Karim Mussilhy, who lost his uncle in the Grenfell Tower fire, has just finished giving a painful morning's evidence about the immediate aftermath of the blaze.
At the end of his evidence, he gave this speech. It is worth sharing:
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81% of social tenants are white, 92% are UK nationals.
The overwhelming majority of immigrant households rent privately.
Social housing is built with initial grant, but its day-to-day running costs are covered by rent. Calling it 'subsidised' is misleading.
Is it right that some recent arrivals to the UK have the same eligibility to apply for housing benefits as people who have lived here all their lives?
A higher proportion of the foreign-born population live in subsidised social housing than the UK-born population.
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From time to time I look at the news and remember our English teacher telling us in May 2001 that John Prescott punching a farmer would "probably be the biggest story of our lifetimes"
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The Housing Ombudsman's report into damp and mould in social housing from October last year was titled 'It's not lifestyle'. Blaming tenants for having baths and drying clothes should be “banished from the vernacular of landlords when discussing damp and mould”, it said
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Boris Johnson says "newt counting" is the cause of slow building in the UK.
According to the Conservative Party's own detailed analysis, that is, I'm afraid, bollocks
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Today we've heard how in the aftermath of Grenfell, the British state was unable to offer the most basic information to families searching for lost children, but did manage to send armed police to patrol the rest centre where the community were sheltering.
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Looking around at the sudden outbreak of public awareness and political engagement for the post office scandal and wondering if and when this will happen for Grenfell and the building safety crisis
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I too am angry about the Christmas party. But I would honestly like to see some more anger over the fact that the government covered up the risk of dangerous cladding for three decades before Grenfell and still had the audacity this week to pretend it caught them by surprise
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Brief aside to note that ITV was the only TV outlet to seriously cover the Grenfell Inquiry; exposed social housing disrepair in a way which has led to a change in the law and has now pushed the Post Office scandal into the public eye. Underrated as a public service broadcaster.
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Private Eye continuing to pay attention to the detail not the headlines in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry. This is worth a read.
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It is basically impossible to have watched the Grenfell Tower Inquiry and not feel that the construction industry is rotten from top to bottom: architects, contractors, product manufacturers, certifiers. The entire industry has come across as venal, careless and negligent.
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New: we have obtained letters which show PM's chief of staff
@GavinBarwell
did not act on multiple warnings on fire safety and building regulations in the lead up to
#Grenfell
- the last letter arriving just 26 days before the fire
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The government is planning to quietly weaken the restrictions on putting combustible materials on high rises following lobbying from the insulation industry.
Yes, you read that right.
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Hi I'm a trade mag journalist and my favourite thing is to be phoned by broadcasters who are doing a story on my patch and want me to sort out them out with very specific contacts.
Please don't bother being polite, the honour of helping you is enough
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1. In an email exchange in March 2015, designers of the tower's cladding system wrote: “There is no point in ‘fire stopping’. As we all know; the ACM will be gone rather quickly in a fire!"
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Amid a flurry of coverage of the misery being caused by the cladding scandal this week, I think it's worth explaining that this problem comes from 30 years of building regulation failure and the fact that the government has not taken responsibility for that (thread)
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September 2002.
The date from which the British state appears to have known everything it needed to know to stop the Grenfell Tower fire from ever happening.
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Tomorrow could well be one of the most important days in the Grenfell Tower inquiry since it began two and a half years ago.
I appreciate minds are firmly elsewhere, but here's a quick thread of what's happening and why it matters:
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I don't know if, when or why Grenfell and the building safety scandal will 'break through' in the way the Post Office Scandal has. But I'm confident if it does the reaction will be similar. There is such a common reaction of outrage when people hear the details for the first time
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Lots to take from this morning's closing statements at the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, but this from Danny Friedman KC is probably worth sharing. The inquiry has shown a world absent empathy. As well as all the technical stuff, that needs to change
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So - a poorly kept secret - but I'm very honoured and a touch terrified to have been given the chance to bring together my reporting on the Grenfell fire over the last few years into a book. It's called Show Me The Bodies, and it will be out in November:
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To contextualise the underspend, £1.9bn would get you around:
19,000 socially rented homes
633 high rises with dangerous cladding remediated
3,800 social housing blocks retrofitted with sprinklers
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No. Feilding-mellen was the housing leader in the council responsible for Grenfell's condition. He might not be the only one with questions to answer, but he shouldn't be getting space in a national magazine to wax lyrical about his trauma
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2. The architects were appointed despite an almost total lack of experience designing high rise cladding systems. An open procurement process was deliberately avoided by splitting their fee
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3. The architect responsible for the early design and specification of the cladding system was not aware of the basic rules surrounding compliance and did not take steps to familiarise himself with them
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4. A consultant from fire engineering experts Exova described the plans for the refurbishment as "not great" and "making an existing crap condition worse"
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A quick lesson in housing finance:
Social tenants' rents aren't subsidised by your taxes. In fact, they cover the cost of maintaining the home, a chunk of the cost of building new ones and contribute to capital repairs to properties they don't live in
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72 months, 72 victims, no prosecutions
How many more anniversaries before justice?
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Lunchtime update from the Grenfell Tower Inquiry:
- Rydon manager gloated about being 'quids in' as he discussed profit boost company would get through switching cladding to deadly ACM
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This is a block with ACM cladding which I visited in 2019 as part of a piece about how long it was taking to remove. Here we are two years later - the cladding is still on the walls and now it's on fire.
Firefighters are tackling a fire at a 19-storey block of flats in
#Poplar
Parts of the 8th, 9th and 10th floors are alight. There are now 20 fire engines at the scene ©
@ATLondon2
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Amid rumours that Gavin Barwell is being lined up for a peerage in Theresa May's resignation honours list, here's a reminder of the seven times he ignored fire safety warnings in the year before Grenfell
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That's enough for now. So far, this thread comes from the first seven weeks of evidence. We're currently on Week 79. So much more to come...
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If anyone wants to put the length of the Grenfell Inquiry into context, I missed the very first opening hearings due to paternity leave for my first son. I'll be a bit late filing my report on the closing statements today because I need to pick him up from primary school
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I want more railways, solar panels and much more social housing. I don't want another big events venue in an area with the London Stadium, the O2, the Emirates and Spurs nearby. Good planning would give us things we need, not just let exploitative cash grabs slide through
The Las Vegas Sphere was announced in 2018. Construction began that same year. It’s now hosting stunning visuals and amazing concerts.
Public consultation seeking planning permission for an identical sphere in Stratford, East London also began in 2018.
It is yet to be approved.
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For two and a half years, my professional life has revovled around the Grenfell Tower Inquiry. As the evidence finally comes to an end, here are some personal reflections:
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10. Rydon hid the true cost savings which could be made from this switch and intended to 'pocket the difference'. One employee wrote "we will be quids in!"
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5. The fire engineering consultant appointed to review the plans was not a qualified fire engineer. But he had previously worked with the building control inspectors in Kesington who would sign the project off. Colleagues called him "the man for contacts down there"
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9. Rydon, which had submitted the lowest bid for the refurbishment contract, was tipped off they were in first place and held an 'offline' meeting with KCTMO to cut £800,000 of cost, which included switching the cladding for the highly combustible ACM
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6. Despite being emailed details of the cladding system, this consultant, Terry Ashton, made no assessment of the plans and instead produced a report saying the refurbishment would have "no adverse effect in relation to external fire spread"
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8. A Rydon manager described residents who complained about the refurbishment as 'rebel residents' in an internal email and doubled down on his criticism of them when he gave evidence
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Amid the discussion about Kingspan's sponsorship deal with Mercedes, here's a brief run through of what the Grenfell Tower Inquiry has revealed about them 🧵
Glad to have you onboard, Kingspan! 👊 Welcome to the Team! 👏
An exciting partnership, starting for these final two races of the 2021 season 🙏
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7. This conclusion was to be confirmed in a final version of the report, but it was never written, with contractor Rydon ditching the fire engineers to save money - despite telling project meetings they planned to retain them
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Economists on twitter: "Landlords won't pass the cost of higher mortgages onto tenants. Rents are set by the market and if they could charge higher rates they already would be."
Landlords in the real world:
‘I’m a landlord and my mortgage goes up at the start of 2024. Can I pass this on to my tenants?’
The key point with any option is that you provide the tenant with as much notice as possible, responds Nick Mendes in this week’s Money Clinic
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Bolton is the fifth fire this year which has either partially or totally destroyed a multi-occupancy building.
This is a national crisis and the next government can either get to grips with it or explain why they didn't when bodies are being pulled out of a building
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I think an overlooked element in the debate around public sector pay is how lower pay makes it hard or impossible to recruit and retain staff. That means you bleed expertise and can't fill rolls for months with a huge, draining impact on the staff who remain.
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Your regular reminder that the only purchasing habit that needs to be dropped for younger people to get on the housing ladder is older people's penchant for buying houses they don't live in and renting them to us for half our salary 👍
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Somehow a narrative has developed that the Phase One report was all about firefighters and not about building failure.
That isn't true. Thread to follow:
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I’m honoured and overwhelmed to receive this, and I really can’t say how much it means. Thank you to everyone who has sent me a message, I appreciate it so much
Congratulations to Peter, and all the 2023 finalists.
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Very sorry to say there was inaccuracy in this tweet. Brandon Lewis was knighted in June. Which means all four Conservative politician who were called to answer for their failures to prevent the Grenfell Tower fire have been either knighted or given a peerage since the fire.
As it goes, three of the five politicians called to the Grenfell Inquiry had been given honours after the fire
Gavin Barwell became Lord Barwell, James Wharton became Lord Wharton and Eric Pickles became a knight
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17. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea cut its building control team from 12 to four in the years before the fire, with the inspector who reviewed Grenfell working on 130 projects simultaneously
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Living in a home involves water vapour. If you want to breathe, cook, wash and wear clean clothes. If the home gets mouldy as a result it is not fit for habitation and in need of repair. And if you're the landlord, that's your job
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Let's go for another ten.
11. Ray Bailey, the boss of cladding sub-contractor Harley, appointed his 25-year-old as project manager despite the fact that he had one job's prior experience
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Here's a handy graph for anyone looking to contextualise the extra 5,000 social rented homes a year
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19. A KCTMO project manager binned notebooks covering her time working on the refurbishment before they could be examined by police
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13. The commercial manager at this firm encouraged the architects to switch to cheaper ACM cladding. An email from the firm which cut and sold these panels later promised him a "very nice meal very soon somewhere very nice” when the deal was secured
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I appreciate why this will have passed many people by, but the evidence about government from recent weeks at the Grenfell Inquiry has been genuinely incredible.
Here's a selection of our headlines:
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15. A warning that there was a "weak point for fire" at the top of new windows due to a missing cavity barrier resulted in no action to remedy it. Fire would later break through the windows to ignite the cladding
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Waltham Forest Council evicts a homeless family with three children from their temporary accommodation for failing to attend a property viewing 180 miles away in Stoke-on-Trent
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16. The tower's building control surveyor accepted his work "fell below the standards of a competent surveyor", including not properly checking whether the combustible cladding products complied with the rules
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This is a very strong offering from Newsnight which - following several reports over the last few months - has dedicated its entire show to the building safety crisis and has nailed the key points. No government representative willing to argue its case on air.
We're live now on
@BBCTwo
with Emily Maitlis in Manchester for a special programme on the building safety crisis - you can also watch online at
#Newsnight
|
@maitlis
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Huge, breaking: Camden says fire proof cladding commissioned but NON-fire proof was fitted, tests show
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The Grenfell Tower Inquiry has run in parallel to a police investigation, which covers offences including manslaughter, for four years. There has never been any suggestion its report will need to be censored or delayed to avoid prejudicing police inquiries.
What's different?
A question on the Met delay to the Sue Gray report:
Any first year media law student could tell you contempt of court is only a risk once someone has been arrested + only applies if there is a serious risk of prejudicing a jury trial. But...
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For those who responded to my thread last week saying 'who is even saying this', here's your answer.
90%+ of social tenants are UK citizens, 80%+ are white. Most immigrant households live in the private rented sector.
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The evidence before the Grenfell Tower Inquiry has set out in detail how an obsession with deregulation completely undermined safety. But the fire has been exceptionalised, the lessons ignored and 5.5 years on politicians are still calling for another bonfire.
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Here's a quick thread about government, social housing and the lack of regulation to ensure tenants have some protection when housing management goes wrong. Because... well... there is a certain level of hypocrisy from current ministers which can't be left unaddressed
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27. When a consultant queried the suitability of Kingspan's insulation for high rises, a former manager said they could “go fuck themselves” or Kingspan would “sue the arse [off] them”
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20. The same project manager, Claire Williams, emailed Rydon in November 2014, saying she had been thinking of the Lakanal House fire and wanted to check if the cladding was fire safe. There is no record of a reply
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18. KCTMO was warned the refurbishment would "fail" unless the budget was raised, but "strongarmed" its consultant into changing its report on this point and with "value for money" made the key driver of the project
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12. Mr Bailey said he "took it on trust" from the manufacturers of the cladding products that the materials complied and described his "confusion" about basic fire standards for these products
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Some pretty striking projections on Kensington Town Hall last night from campaigners ahead of the four year anniversary
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26. When Kingspan tested a system including the new version of its insulation in 2007, the test resulted in a "raging inferno" with the insulation "burning on its own steam". This test was kept secret - even from other parts of its own business
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21. Lawyers for bereaved and survivors described cladding and insulation manufacturers as "crooks and killers" and accuse them of a "sinister" attempt to undermine building regulations
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24. A former technical officer explained how Celotex, which made most of the tower's insulation, added secret fire resisting boards to a key test to help sell its product on high rises. He said this was a direct reaction to pressure to boost profit
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Extraordinarily disingenuous. The govt’s own evaluation of its right to buy extension pilot said it was unlikely every home would be replaced and “replacement homes will be on average smaller, at higher rents and include more homes for shared ownership and fewer for rent”
Michael Gove tells me extending "Right to Buy" to housing association tenants cannot lead to depletion of social housing stock, insisting for every one sold one must be built to replace it.
But govt isn't directly in charge of selling or building, so it's hard to guarantee that.
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The UK housing crisis tips further into flat out dystopia. Bank of Mum and Dad now required to even *rent* a roof over your head
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23. It is revealed cladding manufacturer Arconic had testing from 2004 which showed the devastating fire performance of its ACM, but kept selling it. Internal emails discussing this say: ‘It’s hard to make a note about this because we are not clean’
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As many people have pointed out, for many years the '96' victims figure was long synonymous with Hillsbrough (it recently, tragically, became 97). Mr Pickles would appear to have mixed them up. On Monday, his junior minister, Stephen Williams, got the date of the fire wrong.
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PROFILE of the new housing minister:
::Inset name here:: is a little-known backbencher with no previous interest in the sector, who has frequently campaigned against green belt developments in their constituency.
(Just getting it ready)
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25. Celotex used this test to help it obtain an LABC certificate which erroneously said its combustible product could be used on high rises “with a variety of cladding systems”. A former manager admits this was "intentional" and "dishonest"
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14. The combustible insulation was selected after architects and engineers selected an "aspirational" standard for thermal efficiency, beyond what was required by law and described as "over the top" in internal documents
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Another newly released bit of Grenfell Inquiry evidence shows that in 2015 civil servants were discussing "completely removing" official building standards and "relying on industry standards instead".
We were only in the foothills of deregulation when Grenfell happened.
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It also says that evacuating disabled people would hinder the evacuation of other residents. I'm not a lawyer, but this sounds like the kind of backwards, ableist argument that the Equalities Act was designed to eliminate:
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22. Insulation manufacturer Kingspan withdrew a test which had formed the basis of its claim that the product was suitable for use on high rises for years, admitting it was carried out on a legacy product removed from the market in 2006
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Since 2015, London has built 316,498 homes - almost an entire new borough. Just 7,526 have been for social rent. That's about 2%.
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New: Four days after the Grenfell fire a police assessment warned of 'crime and disorder' because of the 'Muslim background' of the victims.
Community lawyers say: "This is Islamophobia. It’s racism. It is the elephant staring back at us in the room"
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Big fan of the idea that a political party should pay damages for the actions of everyone their donors are linked to. Get those dangerous cladding invoices in to CCHQ!
I’ve written to
@Keir_Starmer
to request he pays for the criminal damage the Just Stop Oil attacks on the Energy Security Department caused this morning
As the political wing of Just Stop Oil, it is the Labour Party not the taxpayer that should be paying the bill
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Terrible news. Newsnight one of the few areas of the UK media where there was rigorous and in depth work on Grenfell and building safety. We desperately need that sort of journalism. We could do with less manufactured debate.
...From the BBC online article on the changes:
"The long-running show will lose its dedicated reporters, be shortened by 10 minutes and drop its investigative films to focus on studio-based debates." 👇
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Pausing there for now. We're now at week 15 of 79, and (arguably) the most shocking revelations are still to come...
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Essentially this is classic Johnson-ism. Newt counting makes it all sound silly, but what we're actually talking about is further deregulation of housebuilding.
I'm not sure recent new build quality screams 'just put the clipboard away and let them get on with it'
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