Seven years on and is cladding reform delivering real safety?

Nearly seven years on, Grenfell is no longer front-page news and is no longer the subject of nightly bulletins or urgent parliamentary soundbites. But it remains the defining event of modern building safety in the UK - a line in the sand that changed regulation, liability and trust in the construction sector. The question now is not whether reform was necessary, because it absolutely was. The harder question is this - has cladding reform gone far enough - or has it gone too far in some places and not far enough in others, writes John Ridgeway?

There is no doubt the regulatory landscape is dramatically different. The Building Safety Act has reshaped accountability. The introduction of duty holders, the new Building Safety Regulator and far stricter rules on materials have fundamentally altered how high-rise residential buildings are designed and signed off.

Combustible materials on the external walls of tall residential buildings are now heavily restricted. The era of assuming compliance equated to safety is over. That cultural shift alone is significant, but legislation on paper is not the same as safety in practice.

One of the unintended consequences of post-Grenfell reform has been paralysis. Projects have been delayed, developments stalled and buildings stuck in limbo because no one is prepared to sign off risk. A professional culture has emerged in which caution sometimes tips into fear.

Risk aversion

You can see it in the way EWS1 forms became gatekeepers to mortgage lending. You can see it in the widening scope of remediation, with buildings that were compliant at the time of construction now deemed unacceptable by today’s standards. You can see it in the insurance market, where premiums have soared and exclusions have multiplied. The industry has, understandably, swung toward risk aversion, but risk elimination is not the same as risk management.

Have we genuinely improved competence across the supply chain? Or have we layered oversight on top of systems that still struggle with clarity and consistency? Are designers clearer about what is acceptable? Are contractors more empowered to challenge unsafe substitutions? Are building control bodies sufficiently resourced to deliver meaningful scrutiny? There are still too many uncomfortable grey areas.

For instance, while high-rise residential buildings have rightly been the focus, what about mid-rise blocks? What about hotels, care homes, student accommodation? Risk does not neatly align with an 18-metre threshold. Fire does not check the height of a building before it spreads.

Equally, cladding is only one component of external wall systems. Cavity barriers, insulation, workmanship and maintenance all matter. If reform becomes overly fixated on product bans rather than system performance, we risk repeating the same mistakes under a different regulatory banner.

Financial burden

Then there is the financial burden. Developers have been required to contribute billions towards remediation and in many cases rightly so. Leaseholders, many of whom were innocent parties, should not have borne the cost of systemic failure, but the wider question remains - who ultimately pays for a more risk-averse industry?

Increased compliance costs are not absorbed into thin air. They flow through viability assessments, into land values, into project pipelines. At a time when housing delivery is already under strain, the balance between safety and deliverability becomes even more delicate, but none of this should be an argument for retreat.

Grenfell exposed profound weaknesses - in product testing, in regulatory oversight, in accountability. Reform was overdue. The industry needed to confront uncomfortable truths about value engineering, fragmented responsibility and the assumption that “meeting the minimum” was enough.

But meaningful reform is not just about prohibition. It is about competence. It is about clarity. It is about creating a culture where professionals understand risk deeply, not just legally.

The real test of whether cladding reform has gone far enough is not how many materials are banned. It is whether the next generation of buildings is demonstrably safer and whether the people designing, constructing and approving them feel confident in the system rather than intimidated by it.

If the legacy of Grenfell becomes a regulatory environment defined by uncertainty and defensive practice, then we have not fully succeeded. If it becomes a turning point that embeds proportional, evidence-based fire engineering into mainstream construction, then it will have reshaped the industry for the better.

The Grenfell effect is still unfolding. As a result, the industry must continue to demand higher standards, but it must also ensure that reform produces clarity, competence and confidence, not just caution. Safety should be uncompromising. but it should also be intelligently delivered.