Hello and welcome to the Grenfell Tower Inquiry podcast with me, Kate Lamble.

This week, a manager from a national testing laboratory accepted that he made a fundamental

omission when analysing a large-scale fire test carried out by the insulation manufacturer Sellatex,

and a building control officer claimed that the insulation manufacturer Kingspan misled him.

Let's get to the evidence then.

The inquiry has now heard from most of the manufacturers of the cladding products installed on Grenfell Tower,

so it's turning its attention to the organisations which tested

and certified those products for use on high-rise buildings. Just like last week, the major

focus of this week's evidence was the building research establishment. This is

counseled to the inquiry, Kate Grange, reading from one witness statement.

BRE is an independent and accredited testing laboratory, which may be engaged by test

sponsors to carry out specific standardised fire testing. Essentially, if you were a manufacturer

and you wanted to prove your product met certain standards, you could pay the BRE to carry out the fire

test. The BRE had close links to government. In fact, it was the UK's National Research Centre

for Building Science until 1997, when the organisation was turned into a charitable trust.

And that means the work the BRE carried out over the years influenced

regulations. One of the witnesses this week, Tony Baker, even co-authored an issue of the document

which allowed combustible materials to be used on high-rise buildings if they passed large-scale

fire tests. And given the BRE's role,

the organisation's independence during the tests

it carried out on the materials

later installed on Grenfell Tower

...