Consultation on the General Safety Requirement (GSR) for Construction Products

Overview

The Grenfell Tower tragedy in June 2017 claimed 72 lives and exposed a pervasive crisis in the United Kingdom’s construction products regulatory regime. The devasting loss of life laid bare failures in the mechanisms designed to safeguard homes and residents. 

The Construction Products Reform White Paper  confirms the government’s ambitious programme of reforms that are essential for public safety, critical to unlocking long term investment and economic growth, reducing trade friction and boosting productivity, and to the delivery of high-quality homes, other buildings and infrastructure.

The white paper sets out the government’s proposal to expand the current construction products regulatory regime by introducing a risk-based general safety requirement (GSR) for currently unregulated construction products. This consultation sets out the detailed proposals and seeks views on them.

The GSR will require that construction products placed on the market are safe and will establish specific obligations for businesses. Key proposals include:  

• mandatory risk assessments for manufacturers  

• provision of accurate product information  

• sufficient labelling which enables traceability of products  

• record retention to support enforcement  

• monitoring products on the market to identify and address safety risks 

The proposals also include stronger enforcement powers for the national regulator for construction products to monitor compliance and take action when safety issues arise.   

These proposals aim to balance safety with proportionality. This means avoiding unnecessary burdens on business to unlock innovation, investment and long term growth, while delivering safer homes, building and infrastructure for people and communities.  

A full Regulatory Impact Assessment has been carried out to support these proposals. 

Survey Information 

There are 21 consultation questions and 8 'About You' questions. This consultation will last for 12 weeks from the 25th February 2026 until 20th May 2026.  

You should read the GSR consultation before answering the consultation questions. 

This consultation is being published alongside the Construction Products Reform White Paper. To respond to the white paper consultation please click this link: available here on Citizen Space.

Privacy Notice

Responses to this consultation will be retained for 2 years. This does not apply to any personal data which is governed by the privacy notice below.

For further information on how the information you provide will be used, please read the data protection annex (Annex A) within the GSR consultation. 

AI Privacy Notice

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) may appoint a ‘data processor’, acting on behalf of the Department and under our instruction, to help analyse the responses to this consultation. Where we do, we will ensure that the processing of your personal data remains in strict accordance with the requirements of the data protection legislation.

MHCLG will take reasonable and proportionate steps to remove personal data from the consultation responses before using an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool. The AI tool processes data securely and does not copy or share data. The data will only be accessed and used by those authorised to do so.

The AI tool identifies themes present in the responses. The draft themes are reviewed and agreed by a policy team before the tool then maps responses to the themes to be used by policy teams to analyse the consultation. MHCLG will take steps to check for accuracy and identify and reduce bias.

Clicking on the "GSR Consultation Questions" button below indicates that:

• you have read the privacy notice
• you agree to take part