THE GRENFELL inquiry heard that Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation’s (KCTMO’s) project manager ‘threw away’ most of her hand written records when she left in 2018.
Construction News reported on evidence from KCTMO project manager for Grenfell, Claire Williams, who revealed she ‘destroyed all but one’ of her notebooks relating to her employment at KCTMO when she left in May 2018. Asked by inquiry counsel Richard Millett where her records were, she responded that she had ‘binned’ all bar one when she left KCTMO, and was ‘unsure’ whether police had removed them from her office, but ‘if not’ they had been thrown away.
When asked by chair Sir Martin Moore-Bick why she had done this when she knew a public inquiry was to be held, she said ‘everything that was in there, I would have thought was actually documented elsewhere. For example: for notes of site-meeting minutes, we would have had formal site-meeting minutes’.
When asked by Sir Martin if she remembered destroying the notes, she replied: ‘I think I just tidied up the desk. I would have looked at them and thought that there was nothing there that wasn’t in formal evidence, but I did keep the last one I had, which is the one I’ve given to [KCTMO solicitors]. There was nothing underhand about it.
‘I was clearing my desk and […] it was of little value. I appreciate that perhaps indication should have been given [from the police or inquiry team for me] to preserve everything but, for me, I just left the job and I just cleared my desk.’
Mr Millett asked in turn if she had told police she had destroyed evidence relating to their investigation, to which Ms Williams replied she ‘had not’, and it was only in being questioned at the inquiry that ‘it occurred to her […] for the first time’ that she ‘may have been doing that’. The inquiry heard that KCTMO’s Peter Maddison had contacted solicitors last week to reveal that he had diaries and notebooks relating to his work at KCTMO ‘stored at home’.
He got in touch after watching the questioning last week ‘about whether there were any records of a meeting between Rydon and [KCTMO] that took place during the procurement process’, with the inquiry having since received eight notebooks and five diaries from him. Mr Maddison is also due to give evidence later this week, with Construction News pointing out that his records ‘run to around 300 pages and relate to all his work’ on the Grenfell project.
Building reported that Ms Williams told the inquiry that while she had her ‘Lakanal moment’, where she ‘flagged concerns spurred’ by the 2009 fire, and she had ‘wanted clarification’ on the cladding to be used on Grenfell, she ‘did not read a key safety document’ on the matter. She stated that she knew a contractor – James Cousins - ‘connected with’ Lakanal, and ‘understood cladding was an issue’, with Mr Millett asking her about her email to Rydon’s Simon Lawrence in November 2014.
This was the email in which she stated ‘I am just writing to get clarification on the fire retardance of the new cladding. I just had a Laknall [sic] moment’, and Mr Millett said there ‘is no record’ of Mr Lawrence responding to this email, though he told the inquiry that he would ‘probably’ have passed this onto Harley Facades. Ms Williams noted that she believed he had given ‘verbal assurance’ along the lines of ‘of course it meets those standards’ at a later site meeting.
Asked if she could recall Mr Lawrence answering the question, she said ‘no’, and then asked why she had not ‘pressed’ Rydon for a ‘clear written answer’ to the question ‘given that it broached serious safety issues’, she responded that ‘in hindsight, I wish I had’. Ms Williams then discussed her former colleague Mr Cousins, and that she ‘understood’ one issue with the Lakanal fire was the ‘replacement of asbestos panels with new cladding that was not fire-retardant’.
Her conversation with Mr Cousins about that fire ‘would have taken place before’ she joined KCTMO in 2013, and asked why she had waited over a year to ask about the safety of cladding proposed for Grenfell, said that ‘I wasn’t clear enough on the external construction of Lakanal House to know that there was a similarity. The project had been on the books since 2012, there was a professional team on site and lots of discussions about cladding.
‘I assumed at the time that many of those conversations would have been had earlier’. She was also asked about former colleague and KCTMO head of capital investment David Gibson’s claims that Mr Lawrence had ‘given an assurance’ that insulation was ‘completely inert’, supposedly given at a project meeting she attended alongside Artelia’s Philip Booth. No minutes for that meeting have been found, but Mr Gibson and Ms Williams said they had hard copies ‘at one stage’.
Mr Booth said he ‘does not recall’ being at a meeting ‘when such an assurance was given’, while Mr Lawrence ‘disputes giving the alleged assurance’. Mr Millett asked her if, when she saw footage of the tower on fire, she had thought ‘Simon Lawrence told me it couldn’t burn; how come it’s burning?’, to which she said ‘no, that wasn’t uppermost in my mind at the time’.
Next, she was asked about her knowledge of a fire safety assessment for Grenfell from Exova produced in November 2013, which stated that ‘it is considered that the proposed changes will have no adverse effect on the building in relation to external fire spread but this will be confirmed by an analysis in a future edition of this report’. Exova was ‘not retained’ by Rydon when it was made main contractor in 2014, but provided advice ‘on an ad-hoc basis’.
Building pointed out that the report was written before ‘key decisions’ on the aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding and the combustible insulation were taken, and it was ‘never updated’. Asked by Mr Millett if she knew Exova said the report would need to be updated, Ms Williams said ‘no’, and asked how it was possible she did not know that as the person at KCTMO ‘at least nominally in charge’ of the project, she replied that ‘it was not pointed out to me.
‘But the Stage D report was about the cladding and I would assume that any further reports from 2012 would cover the cladding. The Stage D report was very clear there was going to be cladding and it talked about what the options were’. She believed Rydon planned to keep Exova as a fire safety consultant once named main contractor, but the inquiry was told minutes from an April 2014 contractor’s induction ‘onwards’ showed Rydon was ‘being asked to do something about bringing Exova on board’.
Asked why minutes ‘did not record’ her chasing Mr Lawrence up on this, Ms Williams said that ‘it wouldn’t be my role to do that’, and that ‘it would be Artelia as employer’s agent to make sure there were no gaps in the professional team’. Sir Martin said she had given similar answers ‘on a number of occasions’, adding that ‘I’m getting the impression that you left everything to Artelia and didn’t take much of an interest in what was going on. Would that be fair?’.
In response, she disagreed, stating that ‘my role was to manage the client side, not manage the contract’, with the inquiry then hearing that in April 2016 she had ‘sought details’ on the latest fire safety strategy from Rydon’s site manager at the time Dave Hughes, who sent her the 2013 Exova report. She said she had not read it, despite this version having ‘contained the paragraph pointing out that the report would be updated in future’.
Ms Williams told the inquiry she ‘assumed’ that the project team was ‘on board’ with safety and had not updated the document, but asked if she had any explanation as to why she had not noticed Exova had been promising a future edition she had not received, she said ‘no’.