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

This is the first full week of evidence from inside Whitehall,

as civil servants gave an insight into how the government responded to warnings

about the dangers of combustible cladding materials.

And we heard that the all-party parliamentary group on fire safety chased housing ministers

16 times about a promised revision to the building regulation guidance.

A briefing prepared a few days after the Grenfell Tower fire found the department's correspondence

with this group was appalling, delayed and partial.

And, as Civil 7 said, he could see why people might think there was a cover-up

after the government failed to publish poorly performing cladding test results for more than a decade.

Let's get started with the evidence then.

This week, the inquiry laid out three big opportunities

for the government to clarify or tighten regulations before the Grenfell Tower fire.

The first was in 2001. Following two serious fires in the UK, where flames spread to the external

walls of a building, the government commissioned the building research establishment, or BRE, to carry out a series of tests on building materials. Large mock-ups of cladding systems

were set alight to see how they performed, and one of the materials tested was a panel made

up with thin sheets of aluminium, either side of a core of combustible polyethylene, the same type of panel

later installed on Grenfell Tower.

The material achieved the standard then suggested by building regulation guidance for use

on high-rise buildings, National Class Nort.

Lead Council to the inquiry Richard Millett read from the resulting report.

The results from the test to date show

...