06 October 2020
The Grenfell Inquiry, which is investigating the fire that killed 72 people in the Grenfell Tower block of flats in west London in June 2017, heard in mid-September that "emails, documents and design drawings" relating to the refurbishment of the tower with flammable cladding may have been "lost forever".
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Grenfell files ‘lost forever’ after laptop wiped, inquiry hears (ITV News, link):
"Some emails, documents and design drawings relating to the Grenfell Tower refurbishment appear to have been lost forever after being wiped from a laptop, the inquiry into the fire has heard.
Design manager Daniel Anketell-Jones, who worked for cladding specialists Harley Facades until March 2016, told the hearing he erased his work computer of all files after agreeing to keep the device despite leaving the firm.
The electrical and mechanical engineering graduate told the inquiry on Monday he made the “assumption” his work would remain on the Harley Facades server, which it did not, and denied a claim he arranged for his email file to be deleted from the firm’s internal systems.
“I believed everything would be kept on the company server because all the laptops just attached into the server and all the emails were retained on there,” he said.
In his witness statement, Harley managing director Ray Bailey said he believed every Harley employee who worked on the revamp was able to pass on emails in the days following the June 2017 fire – except Mr Anketell-Jones.
He said: “As for Daniel Anketell-Jones, he left Harley some months before the fire.
“By that stage he had both deleted all of his Harley related emails from his laptop and had arranged with our service provider to remove his email file from our systems.”
Asked about this by inquiry lawyer Kate Grange QC, Mr Anketell-Jones said: “I don’t know what he means by that."
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