Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner has today set out her response to the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, setting out measures designed to fix building safety and strengthen accountability.?
However, one of the Inquiry’s most radical measures has been ignored.
The Inquiry’s final report, published last September, recommended an official government Construction Regulator take over responsibility for assessing product conformity and issuing certificates. [See below.]
Rayner has decided instead that there will indeed be a new single construction regulator, as recommended, but it will merely police the existing system of commercial testing and certification. It will not itself carry out either testing or certification.
Rather, the function of the regulator will be “to ensure those responsible for building safety are held to account… with serious consequences for those who break the rules”.
In its published response to inquiry report, the Ministry of Housing said: “We do not believe it is appropriate for the single regulator to undertake testing and certification of construction products, or issue certificates of compliance, as this would create a new conflict of interest within the regulator. Instead, we will strengthen oversight of conformity assessment bodies through reforms to the construction products regime.”
A green paper has also been published today, with proposals for reform of the construction products regime.?
A regulatory reform prospectus and consultation on the design of the single regulator will be published later this year before bringing forward the necessary legislation to establish it later in the parliament, the ministry said.
In fact, far from having any business taken away from them, there will be more work for private certification organisations because fire risk assessors will now be required to have their competence certified.
The Grenfell Tower Inquiry’s 1,700-page final report, was published last September after a six-year public inquiry. The government has accepted the findings and sets out plans to act on all 58 recommendations.
The government has committed to publishing quarterly reports on its progress towards implementing Inquiry recommendations will be published every quarter from mid-2025. We will also provide an annual update to Parliament to ensure wider scrutiny of the pace and direction of work.?
For the next two years the focus will be on previously announced building safety reforms. A second phase, from 2026 to 2028, will focus on having fully developed proposals to deliver recommendations and wider reform, including via legislation. From 2028 onwards, the government will focus on implementing these reforms, it said.??
This is what the Inquiry’s final report said on product certification:
“Manufacturers were able to use misleading marketing material in part because the certification bodies that provided assurance to the market of the quality and characteristics of the products failed to ensure that the statements in the certificates they issued were accurate and based on appropriate and relevant test evidence. The United Kingdom Assessment Service (UKAS), the organisation charged with accrediting them, failed to apply proper standards of monitoring and supervision. The fact that three separate manufacturers were able to obtain misleading certificates relating to their products is evidence of a serious failure of the system and points to a need for a different approach to the certification of construction products.
“We do not think that the appointment of a National Regulator of Construction Products will solve the problem [ –the Office for Product Safety & Standards (OPSS) is the current UK regulator for construction products and most consumer goods – ] because the system will still depend on the effectiveness of the conformity assessment bodies and the limited oversight of UKAS. Conformity assessment bodies provide a commercial service combined with an element of regulation, but the two functions do not sit easily together. Pressure to acquire and retain customers can all too easily lead such bodies to be less rigorous in their examination of products and materials and enforcing their terms of contracts than could reasonably be expected of bodies acting in the public interest.
“We therefore recommend that the Construction Regulator should be responsible for assessing the conformity of construction products with the requirements of legislation, statutory guidance and industry standards and issuing certificates as appropriate. We should expect such certificates to become pre-eminent in the market.”
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