The final report from phase 2 of the six-year public inquiry into the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire runs to seven volumes and 1,700 pages. As has been widely reported, its findings are damning: every one of the 72 deaths was ‘avoidable’.

The report sets out the avalanche of failings in the refurbishment of the building, which meant what started as a small fire in a kitchen in a flat on the fourth floor was able to rip through the entire building.

One striking thing is that, other than the inquiry’s mammoth legal team (consisting of five KCs, 96 junior counsel, 16 solicitors and 45 paralegals), lawyers and legal advice are barely mentioned. Whereas the inquiry chair, retired High Court judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick, says in the report he ‘cannot speak too highly of their professionalism and dedication’ (vol 1, para 1.27, page 8), the small number of other lawyers mentioned elsewhere in the report fare less well. What comes across is that the attitude of the companies implicated in the disaster was to hide behind legal advice when it suited their commercial interests, and blithely ignore it when it didn’t.

Two years before the fire, in 2015, Kingspan’s response to being informed by National House Building Council (NHBC), the UK’s largest building control inspector, that it would no longer approve its insulation product K15 for use on high-rise buildings was to ‘instruct its lawyers to allege that it was being treated unfairly and to threaten legal action against NHBC’ (vol 2, para 26.87, page 182).

The report also notes that in January 2018, the global law firm DLA Piper wrote to the inquiry on behalf of its client, Arconic, the cladding manufacturer, stating that its employees were barred under French law from being questioned at the inquiry. Arconic is a US company, but its France-based subsidiary had supplied materials to Grenfell. Arconic’s position was rejected by the French government, and the report notes that it chose instead to rely on a contrary opinion ‘it had obtained from an eminent French lawyer and a senior member of the Paris bar’ (vol 2, para 16.24, page 11).

The report adds: ‘It is regrettable that in the face of a disaster in which so many people died [Arconic was] willing to put the debatable requirements of French law above the interests of the survivors in discovering the true cause of their terrible experience’ (para 16.16, pages 11–12).

By contrast, during the tender process for the fateful refurbishment project, the tenant management organisation (TMO) appears to have wilfully ignored legal advice as to the correct way to proceed. Before the procurement process was complete, the TMO entered into informal discussions with the building contractor, Rydon, which ‘were not contemplated by the legislation relating to procurement’ (vol 4, para 53.41, page 62). The TMO had an ‘offline’ meeting, where there were no professional advisers present and no minutes taken, in order to secure a lower price from Rydon. This was despite having received legal advice that such a meeting was ‘not permissible’ and would be ‘improper’.

Another lawyer whose advice was ignored is Maria Memoli, ‘a retired solicitor’ (vol 3, para 33.2, page 27), who was asked in July 2008 to investigate longstanding complaints by Grenfell residents. Her report, dated 10 April 2009, ‘made serious criticisms’ of the TMO’s relationship with residents, ‘particularly as it affected repairs, major works … customer care, probity and ethics, communications, performance and monitoring and trust and confidence’. Memoli concluded that the TMO’s board ‘should understand better its constitutional and legal role’ and made 34 recommendations.

Robert Black, who became the TMO’s CEO a month after the report was published, ‘could not remember having been given a copy of it’ (vol 3, para 33.3, page 27). Although he recalled that the former solicitor had made ‘serious criticism’ of his organisation, ‘his impression had been that [the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea] had not been particularly impressed by it’.

For comment on the report, see Louise Christian’s article.