When everyone is responsible, noone is – the accountability gap in construction products reform

When the Government’s long-overdue Construction Products Reform (CPR) white paper landed in February 2026, it felt significant. For the first time, we have a government document that honestly confronts the systemic failures that have been quietly accumulating for years: poor product data, misleading performance claims and fragmented accountability.

Yes, the Grenfell Tower tragedy looms over all of this. It should. the Grenfell inquiry laid bare what many of us already suspected – that unsafe products were allowed to move through the supply chain with insufficient scrutiny and accountability, and that the regulatory framework was simply not built to catch them. The CPR Whitepaper is a direct response to those findings, and I welcome it.

But “welcome” is not the same as “done”. The hard work starts now.

The vision is right, but the proof is in the pudding

The white paper correctly diagnoses the problems: poor quality product information, lack of traceability, misleading certification and a system that was never truly designed with safety at its core.

Where I have reservations is around effective implementation. Good legislation needs actual uptake and active enforcement to be meaningful. And we have all seen well intentioned reform stall before because the mechanisms for holding people to account were either absent or underused. The Building Safety Act has shown us what is possible when reform has teeth. The CPR process must learn from that experience and ensure the same conviction follows through to delivery.

The consultation is now closed and the general safety requirement is not expected to come into force until late 2027. That gives the construction sector time to prepare. But preparation requires honest engagement, and that means confronting some uncomfortable truths about current practice.

Drawing clearer lines of responsibility

One of the white paper’s central ambitions is to establish clear accountability across the full product lifecycle, from manufacture through to installation. In principle, that is exactly right. In practice, it is where the reform is most likely to come unstuck.

Construction projects are inherently collaborative. A single product can pass through the hands of a manufacturer, a distributor, a specifier, a contractor and a sub-contractor before it gets fixed in place. When something goes wrong, the question of who carries responsibility is rarely simple. If everyone is “a little bit responsible”, then in practice, noone is. That is the accountability gap the CPR has to close.

To do that, the reforms need to define who holds accountability, at what stage, and precisely when that responsibility transfers from one party to the next. Without that clarity, enforcement becomes incredibly difficult, and the temptation to defer to the next link in the chain remains. When accountability is shared, the path of least resistance is to assume someone else has it covered.

I would also like to see stronger expectations throughout the supply chain. Manufacturers carry obvious responsibility; but importers, distributors, designers, contractors and installers all touch a product at some point. Each carries some responsibility for whether a product is suitable and what happens to it on site. That expectation needs to be unquestionably explicit, achievable and supported by evidence at each handover point.

Digital is the enabler, not the end goal

There has been a lot of talk about digitalisation in construction. But we need to be careful about what we are actually asking for. A great deal of the sector has already gone digital. The argument that our industry is somehow “behind” no longer holds. Materials are tracked, deliveries are logged, certificates are stored, performance is recorded. The data is there.

The challenge is that much of that data sits in silos, is inconsistently logged and incompatibly formatted between systems. One contractor’s record of a delivered product does not necessarily speak the same language as the manufacturer’s certificate, the specifier’s design model or the building owner’s asset register. We need to be able to compare apples with apples across the supply chain. That means interoperability: where data can flow consistently from one stage of a project, and from one party, to the next.

The CPR white paper’s push for mandatory digital product information, unique identifiers and QR codes linked to live performance data is a genuine step forward. But the real value comes when those data points connect to each other – and link to the physical reality of what is being built. A QR code on a product label is a starting point, not a fully realised solution.

Bridging the gap between spec and reality

The persistent gap between what is specified and what gets installed on site is, for me, the most critical issue. Product substitution is the point where the entire chain can fall apart. Margins get squeezed, lead times slip, and a different but “equivalent” product gets sent in place of the original. The person accepting and installing the delivery is rarely the person who signed off the specification. But, by the time anyone tries to verify that the received material actually matches the spec, it is often too late.

Paragraph 2.6.4 of the white paper acknowledges this directly, noting that current information systems offer limited capability to trace products from manufacture through to installation. That is an important admission.

Bridging that gap would require robust mechanisms for capturing as-built data, not just design intent. The industry needs ways to link the physical material arriving on site back to its digital record, time-stamp that connection, and create an attributable, auditable chain of evidence. That is how the “golden thread” of safety information becomes real rather than theoretical.

A much-needed culture shift

Construction has been flying under the radar for too long. Other industries, such as food and cosmetics, have been subject to consistent, rigorous digital reporting requirements for decades. We are not being asked to do something entirely new – we are being asked to catch up.

That is a cultural challenge as much as a technical one. Compliance culture in construction has often meant a clipboard and paper on file. The CPR white paper is asking for something different: compliance backed by evidence. It is calling for verifiable, real-time data that shows what was used, by whom, when and why.

That shift will not happen overnight, but it is as possible as it is necessary. The organisations that embrace it now, investing in proper data capture and genuine traceability, will be far better placed when enforcement begins in earnest.

The opportunity ahead

The Construction Products Reform white paper represents a definitive starting point, and UK construction has both a mandate and a framework to do things differently.

My hope is that we use this moment to build something lasting: a sector where safety and quality are not the casualties of cost pressure; where accountability is evidenced rather than assumed; and where the full story of a building, from specification through to “as-built” reality, is captured, connected and transparent.

That future is within reach – we just need to start building it.