A fire that scarred a Huyton tower block and could have provided a warning of the devastating blaze at Grenfell Tower in 2017 was “played down” by the government, archive documents have revealed.
Nobody was injured in the fire at Knowsley Heights in April 1991 but the building suffered serious damage when flames spread from a pile of rubbish at the bottom of the building that had been deliberately set alight.
The resulting fire spread up all 11 floors of the building, with a lack of fire breaks in the newly installed cladding system blamed for the extent of the damage.
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Now, on the fourth anniversary of the Grenfell fire that killed 72 people in west London, an investigation by Inside Housing has found that the Knowsley Heights fire was regarded as “insignificant” and the government said it should be “played down”.
A handwritten note uncovered in the National Archives said: “We have received via HMEA a request from M St Press Office to play down the issue of the fire.
“Our briefing to the secretary of state is purely factual and as far as I am aware, Knowsley [Council] will not be making an issue of the fire.”
HMEA (Housing Management Estates Action) was the government body that had provided £915,000 to install “rainscreen” cladding at Knowsley Heights as part of a project to test the efficacy of cladding in combating damp issues in high-rise buildings.
It was part of the Department of the Environment, whose offices were located at Marsham Street in London. It is likely that this is the “M St Press Office” referred to in the note.
The note is signed only with a first name and it is not clear which organisation the author belonged to.
Knowsley Heights fire 'treated as insignificant'
Immediately after the cladding had been installed, the project appears to have been regarded as a success.
The Building Research Establishment (BRE), which had been appointed to monitor the cladding, said in a report that the methods used at Knowsley Heights could be “readily adapted to other multi-storey dwellings”.
But then came the fire, spreading through the gap between the walls and the metal cladding and the insulation on the walls themselves.
Even worse, the metal cladding protected the flames from efforts to put the fire out, providing a shield against firefighters’ hoses. One firefighter who responded to the incident, Les Skarratts, would later say: “Someone took a decision to wrap a residential tower block with flammable material. As a firefighter that made me angry."
But even after the blaze, official reports appear to have tried to play down the role of the new cladding.
Three days after the fire, an HMEA report said it was being “treated as insignificant” and a similar cladding project in Lambeth was continuing despite the incident at Knowsley Heights.
The HMEA report added: “The block performed well, the fire doors were un-vandalised and in place (which is unusual for Merseyside), the building was evacuated easily, only three people were affected by smoke and all tenants returned willingly to their flats.”
Les Skarratts took a different view, telling a BBC documentary in 2018: “We were very, very lucky with Knowsley Heights. We dodged a bullet."
A spokesperson for the BRE said: “Given the 30-year period that has passed since the Knowsley Heights fire, it isn’t possible for us to comment on the reliability or context of the handwritten note in question. However, we can confirm that the BRE’s role was to prepare a factual report investigating the circumstances of the Knowsley Heights fire.
“BRE is an evidence-based organisation and we have built our reputation on independence and impartiality. We would never compromise on these standards when it comes to the work that we undertake.”
'Track record of recklessness' led to Grenfell
Despite the decision to play down the fire at Knowsley Heights, there was a change in regulations requiring fire breaks be installed in all cladding systems and insulation had to be of “limited combustability”.
But there was no change to require cladding to be “non-combustable” and regulations that allowed cladding that included flammable material to be passed as safe as long as it was covered with something non-combustable remained in place.
A quarter of a century later, many of the same problems would contribute to the fire at Grenfell Tower - this time with fatal consequences.
Grenfell United, a group of survivors and bereaved families, said: "It’s sickening that there has been a disturbingly-long track record of successive governments’ recklessness and indifference over people’s safety.
"Ministers simply have not cared enough to prevent deadly fires such as the one at Grenfell Tower, despite being aware since the 1980s that it was likely to happen.
"The needless loss of 72 people at Grenfell in June 2017 was clearly not enough to make them finally see the error of their ways.
"It’s a scandal that, four years after Grenfell, there have been far too many close-call fires for people to have full confidence that residents in blocks covered in cladding will make it out alive. The scale of the problem currently means another Grenfell tragedy could happen anywhere and at any time across the country.
A government spokesperson said: “We are taking action to improve building safety where successive governments have failed, including the biggest improvements to the regulatory system in almost 40 years through our Building Safety Bill and an unprecedented £5bn funding package to protect residents from the cost of replacing unsafe cladding.”
