Building Safety Bill – Part 3 – Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth

In Part 2 we saw how L A B C Limited grew into a formidable business. It had big ambitions too.

The A C A I could see all this evolving but as set out previously chose to adopt the long game approach, believing that professionalism would eventually be recognised both sides of the divide and that the constant harping by L A B C that the private sector were bad would be countered by common sense. After all Grenfell was a council job.

The A C A I were playing cricket.

L A B C however, were in the clubhouse getting the drinks in for ministers, councillors, and local government leaders.

A C A I chose to stay silent despite the fact that Grenfell was a council building, owned and managed by the council and the Building Control on the tower was undertaken by the council. No Approved Inspector was involved in the project. The last major fires in this country have been on buildings where the council had undertaken the Building Control.

It was believed however, that to point all of this obvious information out would be not only too obvious but “bad form” so the A C A I and Approved Inspectors generally stayed quiet. After all Grenfell could have been an Approved Inspector project and nobody should get political advantage through unfortunate deaths. Fair play to the A C A I for being sensitive to the issues at the time, but that tactic backfired in the long run. Central Government may have appreciated it all not developing into a mud-slinging match but L A B C apparently never got the memo.

The L A B C simply could not let this opportunity pass and so cooked up a plan. Attack was the best form of defence, so they began their campaign in earnest.

This was the script:

Grenfell, they argued, was a direct result of the competition in Building Control. It had all worked well before the private sector were involved. The private sector was responsible for this disaster because they were driving down fees. If they didn’t exist the LA could charge more and employ more staff; more competent staff. A lack of competition was good.

It has a weird logic. It has that certain brass-necked approach that enabled someone to come up with the brilliant idea of giving their retiring C E O a painting of the Fire of London without a second thought. (We covered this in part 2 and is mentioned again only because it shows the L A B C culture).

The L A B C plan was therefore to not only dodge the blame but deflect it; pushing it on to the private sector.

It could only get worse if they ended up doing all high rise residential work.

But that couldn’t happen could it?

L A B C weren’t finished though. They had more up their sleeves. This was the additional rhetoric:

• L A B C argued that the private sector had eroded the standards that they had valiantly sought to uphold. (Despite the fact that LABC bodies have no regulator and are not beholden to an insurer)
• L A B C said the private sector was engaged in a “race to the bottom.” Approved Inspectors were allowing shoddy work because their prices were so cheap and they could not afford to inspect. (Maybe this happens all the while with Ryanair. They choose a cheap maintenance contract to service planes to keep prices low – maybe they just don’t bother with servicing at all?)
• LABC stated that the Private Sector was overcharging. Councils could only charge fees that were for the actual cost of the service – so they weren’t allowed to overcharge. And cutbacks in service meant they had less staff so could only charge less. (Yes that is confusing but it can be used effectively at convenient moments in Council meetings especially Labour-controlled)
• L A B C said the ability for a developer to choose their Building Control Provider was wrong. It was allowing them to “mark their own homework” (A direct quote used by LABC in parliament – see other blog post here.. It also pokes a finger in the eye of clients who must surely be complicit in this, but such clumsy statements seemed to work)
• They said the private sector was corrupt because they were accountable to the people through local democracy in action. (No evidence)
• They said Approved Inspectors had low standards, in fact no standards to match theirs (And they promptly launched their own training course and excluded Approved Inspectors. I’ll let you judge its effectiveness by asking anyone who has attended. My Council would not have enough money to send me if I asked)

With the backing of £4 million a year from their commission from the private sector warranty company using their name (L A B C Warranty) they could pay for a lot of coverage of this (We covered this previously – keep up!) and with ongoing meetings and chats to political friends in the fire service and L G A (and all the other committees that exist to self-promote all of this) froth became fact.

The A C A I remained silent and assumed it would all be seen as the claptrap it was.

The Investigation into Grenfell began and there was a hush. Politicians needed to be seen to be supportive of change. Nobody could question anything for fear of being seen defending the indefensible. That attitude persists in the Parliamentary hearings in to the Building Safety Bill. The witnesses are varied but don’t include Approved Inspectors who are responsible for 50% of the construction work in England and Wales.

The poor building inspector giving evidence at the Grenfell enquiry was clearly overworked. He had too many jobs. He was not properly trained. There were not enough staff despite this being a flagship council. It was terrible to watch him suffer. The system was clearly broken and it needed fixing.

Dame Judith Hackitt opened her laptop.

Please register on the website to receive further blog posts

• LinkedIn
• Twitter