[Korenwolf]

Gone are the days when we had a Clerk of Works to oversee build quality and regulation. This has been handed to the contractor who will cut corners at every opportunity.

Apparently the council-employed building inspector just briefly looked at the 'fit and finish' after the job was complete as he had too many cases on his books to do anything further.

Personally I'm left wondering how a contracted fire safety consultant can justify their position in this whole sorry saga.

[Bill Haddow]

Do items 1 & 2 in https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55349395 say that respected manufacturers misrepresented / falsified technical data of vital importance to their products' performance? If so, then workmanship etc becomes less of a contributory factor.

The appointments of clerks of works and a firm of architects by the council seems to have foundered on that common contractual rock where neither party understands what the other party believes their respective roles and responsibilities to be.

Bill H

[kanga]

I can understand why 'gagging' clauses might be routinely inserted into private contracts (between corporate supplier and corporate or individual client), but I fail to see how they can properly belong when the primary client is a Government Department and the ultimate one is the taxpayer, while the perceived 'victim' of poor service is the ordinary citizen. I'd have thought it was in the essential public interest that poor delivery to the nation by a corporate supplier be publicised. Is this a (further) symptom of the outsourcing mentality of the last few decades ?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55611467

[eltonioni]

Very much doubt it has anything to do with outsourcing as the civil service is quite capable of having an ego as fragile as glass when it comes to criticism.

That sort of unnecessary and very probably illegal wording is what happens when a lawyer has what seems like a bright idea in very particular circumstances. Thereafter the clause is cut and pasted into subsequent legal docs forevermore, whether or not is either useful or applicable. Obviously, the idea of giving free money to thousands of victims who might then mump about some thing or other will stick in the craw, but nobody is immune from criticism, even civil servants.

It's another holes in Swiss cheese scenario but leaseholders have been dealt with very shabbily. Blame the money lenders who look for ever more creative ways of inventing £s out of thin air to increase their ROI by shafting somebody way down the chain.