Former communities secretary Eric Pickles has blamed “middle-ranking” civil servants for failing to act on a coroner’s warning about fire safety.
The Grenfell Inquiry’s final report last week found Pickles and the Department for Communities and Local Government failed to act on a coroner’s 2013 recommendation to tighten fire safety regulations after a cladding fire at Lakanal House, another London council block, killed six people. The warning was “not treated with any sense of urgency”, it said.
A major line of investigation in the Covid Inquiry was the extent to which coroner Frances Kirkham’s 2013 call for a review of Approved Document B – which provides guidance on meeting Building Regulations – was sidelined following an inquest that followed another fire in 2009 at Lakanal House in south London. Six people died in the Camberwell tower-block fire, which came after a flawed refurbishment project.
Kirkham wrote to Pickles, who was communities secretary from 2010 to 2015, about the need to review Approved Document B in March 2013. She raised concerns about confusing wording in the document and poor understanding of the regulations among parts of the construction industry. Her letter also raised other issues, and suggested housing providers with high-rise buildings should be encouraged to retrofit sprinkler systems in homes.
Pickles has now said he had discussed the coroner’s recommendation as a “serious matter” with then-permanent secretary Bob Kerslake, who was overseeing the response to Lakanal House.
“During the inquiry, evidence emerged that middle-ranking officials did not share Bob’s deep-seated sense of public duty. Their attitude shocked and appalled me. I feel they let down Bob, the government, and, more importantly, the public,” he told the Guardian.
Last week’s Grenfell Inquiry report found Kirkham’s recommendations “were not treated with any sense of urgency and officials did not explain clearly to the secretary of state what steps were required to comply with them”.
Several times during the inquiry, Pickles appeared to blame DCLG officials for regulatory failings by saying they downplayed Kirkham’s recommendations.
In April 2022, Pickles told a hearing of the inquiry that officials had advised him not to worry about the recommendation, saying that Kirkham had been “inadvertently” confused by an expert witness to the Lakanal House inquest.
He said the advice he received “certainly” affected his judgement as to the urgency of reviewing Approved Document B.
“It was said that I shouldn’t worry, there wasn’t any real issue in terms of safety, people know these kind of things, and, you know, we will sort this out,” he said.
The Grenfell Inquiry report also found the coalition government’s drive to cut red tape, which was “enthusiastically supported by some junior ministers and the secretary of state, dominated the department’s thinking to such an extent that even matters affecting the safety of life were ignored, delayed or disregarded”.
Pickles told the inquiry in cross-examination that the Building Regulations were exempt from the anti-regulation drive. However, the inquiry found the claim was “flatly contradicted by that of his officials and by the contemporaneous documents”.
It added: “The department accepted that the policy on deregulation being promoted across government since 2010 created an environment in which officials working on Building Regulations felt unable to propose regulatory interventions or refer their concerns to more senior managers.”
In his statement to the Guardian, Pickles said: “In practice, the deregulation of building regulations was not pursued vigorously.
“One of my first acts was to separate ministerial responsibility for housing and planning from building regulation. This was done to act as a check to any temptation to cut corners in our push to increase housing numbers.
“As a further check, the minister for building regulations was always a Lib Dem. All of them did a great job clarifying and improving building regulations.”
He added that the report had clarified that fire and building safety were outside the scrutiny of the coalition-era “red tape challenge”, which aimed to cut down on unnecessary and over-complicated regulations.
Pickles 'should be stripped of peerage'
Pickles is now facing calls to step down as a Tory peer, or to have his peerage removed, in response to the inquiry's findings.
Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, said Pickles "should be stripped of his peerage".
“As the secretary of state for communities and local government in the crucial years between the Lakanal House fire and Grenfell, Eric Pickles had more opportunities than almost anyone else to avert the catastrophe… Instead of acting on warnings, he doggedly pursued an agenda of aggressive deregulation, aiming to give private companies maximum opportunity to make a quick buck at the expense of residents’ safety," he said.
“The result of his actions, and the actions of every single politician who participated in this agenda, was the tragic deaths of 72 people at Grenfell Tower. When called to testify, Pickles told the inquiry not to waste his time and couldn’t even get the number of victims right… As a start, Eric Pickles should be stripped of his peerage.”
Wrack's comments echo those of the union's national officer Mark Rowe, who described Pickles' evidence to the inquiry in April 2022 as "stunning".
After Pickles appeared before the committee, Rowe published a blog post disputing ministers' attempt to "deny that deregulation – a government commitment to cutting rules, [to] benefit business – had anything to do with Grenfell".
“Ministers from these governments gave evidence that essentially said that these warnings being ignored was nothing to do with deregulation,” he said. “That these recommendations were ignored for a whole variety of reasons – their own incompetence, civil servant incompetence, anything except the most obvious answer. The true answer.”
Dent Coad, who was MP for Kensington at the time of the Grenfell fire, said Pickles “should not be in the Lords” or remain head of the anti-corruption watchdog the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments.
“I was there at the inquiry when he was trying to hurry up business because he had an important lunch date to go to. It was the utter contempt that he in particular had with the whole process. Some at least had the shame to apologise. His self-importance filled the room," said Coad, who is now an independent councillor in Kensington
“It is contemptuous to have people like that still continuing in positions of power… he certainly shouldn’t be chairing any kind of committee that relies on the chair having integrity.”