128 Building Control, Osborne Berry and SD Plastering

The Grenfell Tower Inquiry Podcast

BBC

News

4.8 • 627 Ratings

🗓️ 2 October 2020

⏱️ 41 minutes

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Summary

Evidence at the Inquiry this week was dominated by the first witness from the building control department at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. John Hoban was the building control surveyor responsible for the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower. He told the Inquiry he was overworked due to funding cuts at the local council. He said he knew nothing at the time about the fire performance of the combustible core to the panels, and that he did not notice incorrectly installed cavity barriers. He admitted that this was below the standard of a reasonably competent building control surveyor.

Installers of the cladding, Osborne Berry, admitted that some of their workmanship such as the incorrectly installed cavity barriers was unacceptable. The Inquiry also heard from Mark Dixon, Director of SD Plastering, responsible for installing the uPVC window surrounds.

Presenter / Producer: Kate Lamble Producer: Sharon Hemans Researcher: May Cameron

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the Grenfell Tower Inquiry podcast with me, Kate Lamble.
0:09.5	And this week we heard the building control surveyor who oversaw the refurbishment
0:13.2	said he was overworked due to funding cuts at the local council.
0:17.3	The installers of the cladding admitted that there was evidence of poor workmanship.
0:21.9	But the evidence this week was dominated by the first witness from the building control department at the local council, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
0:30.3	Building control's role on the project has featured frequently in some of the evidence we've heard so far.
0:35.8	Witnesses from the architect, Studio E, the main contractor, Riden,
0:39.8	the specialist cladding contractor Harley,
0:41.6	and even the installers have said they were relying on building control
0:45.2	to carry out checks to ensure the work complied with building regulations.
0:50.1	Building control, as I understood, at the time,
0:52.7	were primarily responsible for confirming compliance.
0:55.7	And then we would have the layer of building control to ensure that the design and installation was in accordance with the regulations.
1:03.8	You put forward your designs to the design team and building control who would check it and confirm whether it was compliance or not.
1:13.1	Are you saying that you were reliant on building control to make sure that the products and
1:18.6	design were compliant? Ultimately yes. No, we never had a role of checking compliance, but we
1:24.6	checked that the building control officer was checking and there was
1:28.5	no issues. Building control was described in some opening statements as the last line of
1:33.8	defence for projects. It's building control's job to inspect drawings and work on site to check
1:39.9	it complies with all the regulations. This can be done either by an independent inspector,
1:45.2	or, as in the case of Grenfell, a building control department in a local authority.
1:50.1	And before we go into the evidence, I just want to take a moment to go over how a project
	...

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