THE COMPANY has written to the government to ‘dispute a claim’ heard at the Grenfell inquiry late last year that ‘it tried to mislead MPs over safety tests’.
Construction News reported that during the evidence heard last month, Kingspan’s director of technical, marketing and internal affairs Adrian Pargeter was questioned about a letter sent to politicians ‘looking at the safety of building materials in the wake’ of Grenfell, with inquiry counsel Richard Millett stating that Kingspan had sent a letter to MP Clive Betts – the chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee (HCLGC) – about fire safety performance.
This letter had claimed ‘that properly installed combustible material was no more dangerous than non-combustible material’, with Kingspan said to have cited tests it had put together itself and ‘gamed’ to make the non combustible material ‘deliberately perform worse’. This, the news source pointed out, had been claimed to show that Kingspan ‘tried to mislead MPs’ over the tests.
Now however, Kingspan have written to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) to ‘assert’ that questions put to Mr Pargeter ‘were based on a misunderstanding of which tests the internal emails referred to’, with the company having also written to both the inquiry and Mr Betts on the same subject.
The letter, from Kingspan’s managing director Ralph Mannion, was titled ‘correction of misunderstanding during oral evidence provided’ to the inquiry, with the company stating that it anticipated MHCLG ‘will be closely following the evidence provided’ and that it wanted to ‘draw your attention to a material factual misunderstanding that arose’ during Mr Pargeter’s evidence, pertaining to ‘evidence provided’ by Kingspan to the HCLGC in 2018.
This ‘misunderstanding’, Mr Mannion claimed, led to Mr Millett suggesting Kingspan had ‘engaged in a wholesale attempt to mislead’ Mr Betts and a ‘deliberate attempt to deceive’ both Mr Betts and the HCLGC, and was ‘based on an assertion’ that Kingspan had submitted a test report in July 2018 to Mr Betts and the HCLGC that had been ‘designed to fail’, as well as that Kingspan had ‘failed to inform’ the HCLGC of this.
Mr Mannion’s letter said ‘this is not accurate’, giving a detailed argument in the rest of the letter, namely that its ‘strong view’ is that large scale testing ‘should be used to determine the safety of all cladding systems used in high-rise buildings’, and that the current regulatory system ‘permits the construction of unsafe cladding systems’, based on products being classified as non combustible or of limited combustibility via small scale tests.
Kingspan said that this process ‘assumes that systems which only comprise such products will necessarily be safe, but this assumption is misplaced’, as some systems ‘can be constructed entirely out of such products and yet still be unsafe’. In 2018 the company was ‘aware’ that certain large scale tests ‘which could have been legally built in the UK’ due to using only non combustible or limited combustibility materials ‘had failed large scale fire safety tests’.
It claimed that it ‘had limited details of such tests as they had been commissioned by others’, and ‘wished to provide the detail to support the point that allowing only the linear route to compliance would not necessarily result in safe façade systems being specified and installed’, leading Kingspan to commission two large scale tests using non combustible and limited combustibility materials, in May and July 2018 in Dubai.
The intention of the first test was to test a system ‘which might realistically be specified’ for a UK building ‘but which nevertheless contained certain design “imperfections” and ‘lead to a less robust fire performance than an optimally designed system’. This passed the test, while the July test ‘closely replicated’ government tests that ‘set the benchmark’ for determining national building safety.
Kingspan claimed this test ‘if anything’ was ‘more robust’ than the government tests, but failed despite having ‘been compliant’, and Kingspan provided the test results to Mr Betts and the HCLGC, alongside two other third party test results it had not commissioned but ‘had come to’ its attention. The May 2018 test was not shared with HCLGC ‘because it was not relevant as it did not illustrate the public safety point that Kingspan was seeking to explain’.
It claimed that during Mr Pargeter’s evidence, an email chain from April 2018 was discussed that referred to a proposed test of a system Mr Millett suggested was being ‘deliberately designed to fail’, with Kingspan stating these emails referred to the May tests, not the July tests.
He said a test carried out in May 2018 with flaws deliberately introduced was not shared with the select committee, and this one had been the topic of emails between staff that was discussed at the inquiry. A letter sent to Mr Betts in July 2018 was also shown that provided details of three tests that failed, including the July test. Kingspan believes that ‘it was implicit in the subsequent questioning’ that Mr Millett believed the emails ‘related to the July 2018 test when they did not’.
This had ‘led’ to questioning in which it was suggest the company was ‘engaged in a wholesale attempt to mislead’ Mr Betts and the HCLGC, with Kingspan arguing that the July test ‘had been robustly constructed and contained no such design imperfections’, and so the company ‘did not in fact mislead’ the HCLGC ‘and most certainly had no intention to do so’.
Mr Mannion’s letter stated that Kingspan ‘considers that the three tests’ it provided details of to Mr Betts ‘illustrate the reality that some systems which meet the linear route to compliance for use over 18 metres (and which are therefore permitted to be used without any testing of the system) could nonetheless fail to meet’ requirements.
He concluded that ‘we hope it is clear from the above that a misunderstanding […] has occurred’, which ‘has led to a false impression being created, and widely reported, that Kingspan misled Mr Betts and the [HCLGC] in respect of the July 2018 test. This is wrong’. The July test ‘powerfully illustrates the very important public safety points that Kingspan was making […] namely that large-scale testing of the whole cladding system is the best way to determine fire safety’.
It also illustrated, Mr Mannion claimed, ‘that the current regulatory regime permits the construction of unsafe cladding systems despite their using only noncombustible and limited combustibility materials. The regulatory regime’s failing is to rely on small scale testing of individual components rather than testing how they perform in combination or when subjected to the much greater fire load of a large scale test.
‘We trust that this explanation clarifies the position. We have also written to Mr Betts and the Grenfell Tower Inquiry to correct the misunderstanding’. Construction News noted that Kingspan had ‘waited several weeks to send the letters’, with the company blaming ‘Christmas/COVID and the delays and complexities they created’.
In response, an inquiry spokesperson said: ‘The matter remains under investigation, and it would be inappropriate to say anything more at this stage as the inquiry continues to examine Kingspan witnesses and seek the disclosure of evidence.’