Richard North
Turning
to the issues at hand, the relevance of such matters will become
apparent. But first, we can take it as a given that the main (and very
powerful) driver behind the Grenfell Tower refurbishment – focused
almost entirely as it was on energy efficiency – was the European Union
energy policy and its commitment to an energy efficiency target of 20 percent by 2020, based on 1990 levels.
This Europe 2020 strategy was well-established in 2010, reflected in Directive 2010/31/EU on the energy performance of buildings, amending the 2002 Directive. This, however – as we pointed out - did not specifically require combustible cladding to be used, but nevertheless the implementation of the Directive in the Building Regulations 2010 made the use of some form of insulation an absolute necessity, if thermal standards were to be met.
By then, government policy itself – with a range of inducements
– made it inevitable that the tower block was going to be refurbished.
Not least, under government pressure, improving energy efficiency had
become a key part of Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management
Organisation's investment strategy, it having adopted an energy efficiency strategy since August 2000.
The final pieces that made this disaster inevitable are then
highlighted, albeit unwittingly - almost to the extent of being "smoking
guns" – in two technical papers by a Croatian fire prevention research
team. Much of the content in the first is repeated in the second, but I have included both for the sake of completeness"
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