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

I want to start with a recording of an industry conference held in January 2016,

around 18 months before the Grenfell Tower fire.

Does the panel feel that potentially we are sitting on the time bomb as well in terms of

some of the materials that are installed?

We're hearing this because this week the inquiry questioned representatives from both the

National House Building Council and Local Authority Building Control about the steps they

took to restrict or approve the use of combustible materials in the years

before the Grenfell Tower fire. The technical director of the LABC said the company was

gamed and played by manufacturers for their own benefit. We'll start with the National House

Building Council. They provide warranties on newly built homes and offer one of the largest

independent building

control services in the UK. Steve Evans held a range of technical and management positions in

the NHBC, all involving their building control operations. He was questioned about the fire safety

issues with a number of products, but I'm going to start with aluminium composite cladding.

These are a type of panel made up of thin sheets of aluminium, either side of a separate core. Some, including those installed across the external wall of Grenfell Tower,

were filled with a combustible plastic, polyethylene. The inquiry has already found these panels

to be the main cause of the rapid spread of the fire at Grenfell Tower.

ACM panels, as they're known, were installed on a wide range of buildings across the UK.

After Grenfell, it was found that the NHBC approved the largest ACM development in Europe

at the new capital key in South London.

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