February 27, 2026 Industry news
The government’s Construction Products Reform White Paper, published on 25 February 2026, marks an important step for the built environment, building on the foundations of the Building Safety Act. There is still plenty of detail to work through, but the direction of travel is clear and there are steps businesses can take now to get ahead of what is coming.
What the White Paper sets out is a fundamental overhaul of how construction products are regulated, tested, certified and placed on the UK market. For manufacturers, distributors and the wider supply chain, the question is no longer whether reform is coming. It is whether your business is ready.
From trade rules to safety rules
The White Paper opens with a frank admission. The UK’s construction products regulations were designed to reduce trade barriers, not to protect people. That is the system that allowed unsafe materials to reach Grenfell Tower and what this reform programme intends to dismantle.
The replacement framework will be built on three pillars: safety, accountability and transparency. Every product placed on the UK market will sit within regulatory scope, either through existing designated standards or through a new general safety requirement that covers everything else. The government’s own research estimates that only around 37 per cent of construction products are regulated today. That figure is about to change fundamentally.
For businesses supplying products outside the regulated space, compliance is becoming urgent. But the more immediate challenge, for regulated and unregulated products alike, is information and the data that underpins it.
The information failure at the heart of the problem
What the Grenfell Tower Inquiry exposed was not just a product failure. It was an information failure. The inability to trace decisions. The ambiguity in product data. The lack of clarity over responsibility. The gaps between testing, certification and real-world application. These are the systemic weaknesses the White Paper is designed to address.
The White Paper is explicit on what that means in practice:
“Over the coming years, product information should be made available digitally, in formats that are interoperable, accessible and endure over time. For all products, information must be available digitally. Product labelling must include unique product identifiers, linked to up-to-date product information through a digital label (such as a QR code).”
The government has also committed to go further:
“We will set requirements in legislation and convene industry and government to deliver standardised and interoperable approaches to digitisation. We want to do this in a way that facilitates safe decision-making, builds on existing foundations, and can be maintained, without overburdening manufacturers or stifling innovation.”
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government also explicitly welcomed industry efforts “to agree, define and create the appropriate data structures or templates, and supporting standards, processes and tools that enable well-functioning information flows that support safe decision-making” — a clear signal that the groundwork being laid by industry matters and will be built on.
Mandatory product labelling is confirmed, but the bigger shift is what sits behind it. The White Paper makes digitalisation and traceability central to how the new regime will work, not optional extras bolted on at the end.
Why product identification matters more than ever
A globally unique product identifier is not a complex concept. It is simply a consistent, globally recognised way of confidently saying: this is what this product is. A Global Trade Item Number, or GTIN, sits at the core of the barcode or QR code on a product and links that physical item to a digital record containing everything from safety certifications and fire resistance ratings to installation guidance and material composition.
Responses to the Green Paper consultation are instructive. Technology providers and larger construction firms strongly endorsed unique identifiers and international standards to maintain the golden thread of product information. The call for a consistent, interoperable approach to product identification came from the sector itself.
The White Paper also reiterates the government’s intention to remain aligned with the EU’s plans for digital product passports “where it is in line with our objectives for safe products, safely used”. This points towards product data requirements becoming increasingly consistent across borders.
Traceability is the golden thread in practice
The golden thread, the idea that critical building information should flow unbroken from design through construction to occupation, is no longer a nice-to-have. It is becoming the basis of compliance.
Industry has already shown what this looks like in practice. The CCF product traceability initiative used GTINs linked to manufacturer batch codes to produce detailed reports showing which batch of insulation products was delivered to which of Berkeley Group’s sites and when.
Traceability does not require entirely new systems. It requires a common language and the consistent will to use it.
What businesses need to think about now
The consultation is open until 20 May 2026 and legislation will follow. The businesses best placed to navigate the new regime will be those that get ready rather than wait.
The priorities are practical. Do your products have globally unique identifiers such as GTINs? Are those identifiers being shared with distributors and specifiers, connected to up-to-date product data? Are your declarations of conformity, test results and certification details accessible digitally? These are not questions to answer once legislation lands. They are questions to work through now, when there is still time to build the foundations properly and future-proof your product range. GS1 UK is already working with businesses across the sector on Digital Product Passport readiness and that work is directly relevant to where this regime is heading.
The White Paper also proposes stronger oversight of testing and certification and new minimum requirements for third-party assurance. Understanding how those relationships will change is worth starting sooner rather than later.
A moment of genuine opportunity
The White Paper should not be viewed primarily as a compliance burden. The requirements are significant and penalties include unlimited fines or imprisonment for serious breaches. But businesses that approach this as an opportunity to modernise will find themselves better positioned than those that wait.
Driving genuine change in the built environment depends on a collective willingness to prioritise the integrity of information at every level. A sector where product data is accurate, accessible and consistently shared is one where specification decisions are better, procurement runs more smoothly and the risk of costly remediation is substantially reduced. That is not just good for regulation. It is good for business.
The consultation closes on 20 May 2026. As a not-for-profit organisation that has been supporting the construction industry for many years. If you want to understand what the proposals mean for your business or explore how GS1 standards can help you prepare, get in touch.
