What Dame Judith Hackitt Had to Say on Product Testing at UKTC's Opening Ceremony

Nine years on from the Grenfell tragedy, Dame Judith Hackitt has a warning for the built environment: the industry has made real progress, but part of the system is still catching up.

Presenting as the keynote speaker at the opening ceremony of UKTC’s new fire resistance laboratory, the architect of the Building Safety Act reflected on the journey since her 2017 independent review and the Grenfell Tower Inquiry. Her message was clear - regulatory reform is underway, culture is shifting, and competence is finally being taken seriously as a major factor. Here are some of the key takeaways…

The single regulator and its three pillars

Dame Judith used her speech to map out how England and Wales' new single construction regulatory system is taking shape. Rather than one flat rulebook, it rests on three interdependent pillars:

• Design and construction of buildings

• Construction products and their testing

• Professions and competence of all the people involved

Dame Judith said “Let’s be clear when we talk about these as pillars, they are not independent. Far from it. They are very interdependent and we have to now plot a course through this series of changes we’re making.”

None of these pillars stands alone. A competent designer specifying a non-compliant product is still a failure. A well-tested product installed by someone who doesn't understand how it performs as part of a system is still a risk. Hackitt was explicit that consistency is what the new system has to achieve; and testing sits at the physical centre of that picture, because it's where a claim about a product either holds up or doesn't.

Beyond compliance, not around it

One of the more nuanced points in Hackitt's talk was her distinction between compliance and competence. Compliance, she argued, is the bare minimum; a demonstration that you've met the guidance. However, guidance can't anticipate every scenario, and a tick-box mentality has historically been part of the problem, not the solution.

What Dame Judith is calling for instead is a sector where competent people use test evidence and sound judgement to ask a harder question: are we confident this is genuinely safe, not just technically defensible? That shift doesn't remove the need for guidance and standards - if anything, it raises the bar on how rigorously products need to be tested and how transparently that evidence needs to be shared, because judgement without solid data is just guesswork with confidence.

Andrew Hutchison, UKTC Operations Director, reflected on Dame Judith’s comments, “This shift in attitude reframes what testing is for. It’s not a hurdle to clear before launch, but the evidence base that lets designers, specifiers, and building owners exercise genuine judgement about the products they're putting into buildings, new or already occupied.

This is exactly why we have invested to increase our capacity and services as well as developing a certification scheme that gets verifiable information into the hands of those who need it, when they need it. Manufacturers are already looking at testing differently, and those that don’t could be left behind.”

The proposed General Safety Requirement

Hackitt also brought attention to the direction of travel in the white paper on construction products: a proposed General Safety Requirement that would extend responsibility for using the right products beyond manufacturers alone, to procurers and specifiers too.

In practice, it means test evidence is no longer something a manufacturer produces once and files away. It becomes something the whole supply chain - architects, contractors, building owners, responsible persons - needs to be able to see, understand, and rely on.

Accessible, credible, third-party test data isn't a nice-to-have in that model; it's the mechanism that makes the whole requirement workable.

UKTC ensure enables exactly that, a UKAS accredited third-party certification scheme that bridges the gap between the physical product and the evidence hosted within a single, verifiable source of truth.

The takeaway for anyone specifying, procuring, or manufacturing

Hackitt closed her speech by returning to why all of this matters, a built environment that people can have confidence in, and a legacy owed to the 72 people who died at Grenfell Tower.

Nine years into this journey, the message from one of its most influential architects is that the industry has come a long way on regulation and culture. Testing and product assurance is the pillar that now needs to catch up and every accredited test carried out today is part of closing that gap.

The role of test laboratories in the built environment.

As a UKAS-accredited fire test laboratory, our role isn't to advise on whether to use a product, it's to provide the independent, rigorous evidence that lets manufacturers, specifiers, and building owners make that judgement with real confidence, not assumption.

UKTC deliver fire resistance, reaction to fire, and smoke leakage testing from its UKAS accredited laboratory to both British (BS) and European (EN) standards. Alongside a suite of testing, UKTC also offer Extended Field of Application (EXAP) and Classification reports to enable manufacturers to transition from BS to EN before the 2029 removal of BS 476.

In response to the demand for clearer labelling and verifiable traceable evidence, UKTC established UKTC ensure. The first UKAS accredited third-party certification scheme to be aligned with the golden thread by providing an accessible, traceable and verifiable chain of product safety information from clear product labelling. UKTC ensure has certification schemes for both fire doors and security doors whilst offering dual scope certification for compliant products.  

Click here to talk to our team about your test requirements and discover how UKTC can help you prove compliance and meet regulatory demand.

About Dame Judith Hackitt

Dame Judith Hackitt is a distinguished chemical engineer and former Chair of the UK Health and Safety Executive, and led the landmark Independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety following the Grenfell Tower tragedy, fundamentally reshaping building safety standards across the United Kingdom