A mockup of the cladding system blamed for the catastrophic scale of the Grenfell Tower blaze has failed its government-ordered fire safety check.
The fire safety test was carried out on a large-scale replica of the Grenfell Tower cladding system by Building Research Establishment (BRE) on behalf of the government.
Part of the test was broadcast on Newsnight, on the UK's BBC Two television channel, during which policy editor Chris Cook slammed the design as "an absolute failure".
The test was carried out on a nine-metre tower of aluminium panels with a combustible polyethylene plastic core and combustible PIR plastic foam insulation. The system matches that used to re-clad the west London tower, ahead of the fatal fire that broke out on 14 June and killed at least 80. Both vertical and horizontal fire brakes were included in the test system, to ensure the system would perform to the best of of abilities ? because many people have suggested that errors might simply have been made in the fitting of the panels at Grenfell.
In spite of this, the system still failed.

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"The critical thing about this test is that it is a test on the choice of materials used in Grenfell, installed perfectly. This isn't about 'maybe they messed up the installation', 'maybe th...