Dame Judith Hackitt will chair a new panel of industry leaders to examine ways to improve local authority building control, as committed to by the government in their response to the phase two report of the Grenfell Inquiry
Speaking to the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee on 1 April, building safety minister Alex Norris confirmed that Dame Judith Hackitt would lead a new panel of construction industry leaders focusing on local authority building control.
Norris told the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee: “We will be setting that up very soon indeed. I expect the chair’s announcement any day now – it is going to be Dame Judith Hackitt.”
The minister said the process of filling the panel was underway. “We are pulling together people to sit on it; we want to get on with it,” he continued. “We’ve asked Judith to convene her own team. She leads an industry group, a coalition of the willing within the construction industry who want to raise and change standards.
“She is going to pull her group of people from that, so it will be senior leaders from the industry who have put their hands up and said the industry needs to change. That is very positive.”
“Very significant problems if we don’t act now”
Norris also warned MPs that achieving sufficient construction-oversight skills could be a “real challenge”.
“Unless you have enough high-quality building control professionals, in an environment where they don’t have conflicts or perverse incentives, you will not have a safe environment,” he said. “We are highly motivated in this space. Money has been put in previously to develop more building control professionals, it may well be we have to do more of that.
“The sadness for me is these should be brilliant careers,” he added. “Problem solving, varied, work for yourself if you want to, it’s skilled, important work. But we have a workforce profile that means not only do we have problems now we will have very significant problems if we don’t act now.”
Hackitt is renowned within British building control
Dame Judith Hackitt chaired the Government’s Independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety following the Grenfell fire in 2017. Two reports were published by this body- an interim report in December 2017, and a final report, Building a Safer Future, in May 2018. She currently chairs the Industry Safety Steering Group (ISSG), who meet and review building safety every three months.
Although she did not endorse the ban of combustible cladding in her initial reports, the reforms inspired by Hackitt’s assessment have been widespread across the building sector and she remains a fixture at keynote events.
Speaking at the annual Sir James Wates lecture in December 2024, organised by the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB), Dame Judith Hackitt did not mince her feelings on businesses that attempt to subvert building safety reforms, saying: “I feel strongly that it is time for us to name and shame those who continue to try to game the new system.”
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