Government to take forward all Grenfell recommendations

The government is to take forward all 58 recommendations of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry’s final report, housing secretary Angela Rayner told parliament today (February 26).

In responding to the Grenfell Inquiry report, Rayner said that the government would introduce a single building “super regulator” for the construction industry from 2028 and appoint a chief construction adviser to monitor the government’s work “relating to the Building Regulations, statutory guidance and the construction industry more generally”.

The government is also set to introduce “tough new rules on construction product safety” and is using new powers in the Procurement Act to launch debarment investigations into seven organisations cited in the Inquiry’s report. If certain grounds are met, their names will be added to a published debarment list which must be taken into account by contracting authorities when awarding new contracts. The seven include Kingspan, Arconic and Saint Gobain, which owned Celotex at the time of the fire.

Rayner said: “The Grenfell Tower tragedy claimed 72 innocent lives in a disaster that should never have happened. The final report exposed in stark and devastating detail the shocking industry behaviour and wider failures that led to the fire, and the deep injustices …