The Grenfell Tower Inquiry – What Next

The Grenfell Tower Inquiry published its final report on 4^th September. This Phase 2 report is a substantial document of over 1500 pages split into 7 volumes, 14 parts, and 113 chapters.

The report makes over 50 recommendations covering a wide range of areas. In this article, we look at some of the key recommendations of the report.

One key area is regulation; the report recommends the government bring together various regulatory functions currently carried out by separate bodies under a single regulator. This would have responsibility for areas such as construction products, building control, fire safety, maintaining a publicly available library of useful construction information, and accrediting fire risk assessors.

A number of other recommendations are made for bringing together into single bodies responsibility for functions that are currently distributed across a number of bodies.

There are also recommendations for specialist roles and bodies to advise the Government.

For an occupied building, the Building Safety Act 2022 defines a “higher risk building” as one that contains at least 2 residential units and is at least 18 metres in height (or has at least seven storeys). The report recommends amending the definition to take into account what the building is used for and whether vulnerable people are likely to be present.

A number of recommendations are made for revising the current statutory guidance on the Building Regulations, in particular Approved Document B, which gives guidance on how to meet the technical fire safety requirements of the regulations.

When construction or refurbishment work is carried out on any higher-risk building, the report recommends that a fire safety strategy be produced by a registered fire engineer. The creation of an independent body to regulate fire engineers, set standards, and maintain a register of members is the subject of another recommendation.

A number of recommendations are made for the regulation, certification, and testing of construction products.

Separate recommendations are also made for building control, local authorities, and fire brigades.

An article such as this can only scratch the surface of the findings and recommendations in the report.

At this stage, these are just recommendations; it is likely to take the Government some time to review the findings of the inquiry and decide what course of action to take. Some recommendations will be easier to implement than others, and some may require further consultation and investigation before the government can determine the appropriate response.

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