Angela Rayner made an announcement yesterday in Parliament (26 February 2025) introducing the Government’s response to the Phase 2 Report of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.

The Government accepted all of the Inquiry’s recommendations: 49 in full and 9 in principle.

In terms of the timescales for action, the response sets out the following:

Phase 1 (2025 to 2026): delivery of existing reform

The focus here is on steering a course through existing programmes of reform, including:

• improving building safety through the Building Safety Act and operation of the Building Safety Regulator
• fixing all remaining buildings with unsafe cladding through the Remediation Acceleration Plan
• the construction products green paper consultation
• the resilience review due to conclude in spring 2025
• regulations needed to implement Awaab’s Law for social landlords, including its extension to the private rented sector through the Renters’ Rights Bill
• legislation for electrical safety standards in social housing
• setting new regulatory standards for the competence and conduct of social housing staff (see our previous insight here), and introducing access to information requirements for private registered providers (see our previous insight here)
• reviews of the building control regime and the Approved Documents suite of statutory guidance
• plans for the ongoing review of the definition of a higher-risk building
• formal consultation processes for the formation of the single construction regulator and the College of Fire and Rescue.

Phase 2 (2026 to 2028): further development and legislation

This phase will be about having fully developed proposals to deliver recommendations and wider reform, following on from the above programmes.

Phase 3 (2028 onwards): implementation

At this stage, the necessary legislation and regulatory powers will be in place and there will be a roadmap to full implementation.

The reforms are very welcome all around; the current situation cannot continue. What is clear, however, is that the scale of change is huge and keeping up with developments, including under Awaab’s Law and the Renters Rights Bill, is going to be extremely fast-paced for all housing providers.

We will be following the development of the Government’s proposals, and publishing further thought pieces on specific topics.

Our teams can help by providing practical and thoughtful advice on and assistance with all of the issues faced by social landlords; we would be happy to discuss your needs further with you.