In this case I doubt it was a builder who specified the cladding, more likely an architect who relied on a special materials consultant, who looked at building regulations for guidance. From what I saw there were at least three places in the regulations where you could look for this type of info, they all gave different guidance and all were open to interpretation.
Government is responsible for regulations, and government owns the buildings in question. It's curious that immediately after the disaster, the government has managed to quickly test all the buildings to a higher safety standard; that this was so quickly and easily achieved, and a better standard used is suggestive that the regulations themselves were not properly managed, and this lead directly to the disaster occurring.
Being in charge means you are being paid to be responsible, the buck stops at the top. The question is was this criminal negligence, whichever minister is responsible for housing, when was the last time they had a safety review, both of regulations and of housing stock? Not asking about safety and assuming everything is OK is not acceptable and this should result in prosecution. If the minister did request a review and the results were incorrect, then that's not criminal in my view, but failing to manage a proper review process should result in them losing their position.
However from what I saw on the news one building reviewed since the disaster had no fire doors at the entrance to each flat, this is pure negligence and it's time for the buck to stop.
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Great response. Thanks for giving your perspective. Yes the building design was almost perfect in this case to make the fire worse.