Government proposes sweeping reform to regulate all construction products

The Government has published a Construction Products Reform White Paper setting out sweeping proposals to strengthen the regulation and assessment of building products used across the UK.

The reforms, announced by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, form part of the ongoing response to the Grenfell Tower tragedy and are intended to address weaknesses in the current system that ministers say have undermined safety and confidence in the sector.

At present, only around a third of construction products are formally regulated. The white paper proposes a new general safety requirement that would bring all construction products within scope, ensuring they are properly assessed before being placed on the market or used in buildings.

Alongside the white paper, the Government has launched a consultation on the proposed safety requirement, with secondary legislation expected later this year and full implementation subject to Parliamentary time.

The reforms are positioned as supporting both safety and housing delivery, with ministers arguing that a more robust regulatory framework will provide greater certainty to developers as the Government pursues its target of delivering 1.5 million homes.

In the Ministerial Foreword, Samantha Dixon, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Building Safety, Fire and Democracy, says: “My vision for construction products reform is simple yet fundamental: safe products, used safely, generating significant positive impacts on long term growth and enabling residents and building users to have trust in products in their homes, workplaces, and hospitals.”

She adds that the reforms would close longstanding gaps in regulatory coverage and establish a more robust regime across the testing, certification and oversight of construction products.

“We will close longstanding gaps in regulatory coverage and establish a robust regime that gives confidence in this large and complex sector. Reform policies span the regulatory and institutional system: from bringing all construction products into the regime through the general safety requirement, to guaranteeing that bodies testing and certifying products act in the public interest, with penalties for those who do not,” she adds.

The white paper also accompanies the Government’s first annual report on implementation of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry recommendations, which states that more than 2,100 buildings have either started or completed remediation works, and that inspections and formal notices relating to unsafe buildings have more than doubled.

Together, the measures signal a further tightening of the post-Grenfell building safety regime, with implications for manufacturers, developers, contractors and certification bodies across the construction supply chain.