UK Construction and Law

Building Safety Regulator appoints an independent chair to the statutory panel that holds it to account on higher-risk buildings

By Staff Writer  |  20 August 2026

Gill Kernick becomes Independent Chair of the Residents' Panel, the statutory committee established under the Building Safety Act 2022 to bring residents of higher-risk buildings into the regulator's work. The post is voluntary and held in a personal capacity, and the panel's stated function is to give independent advice and to hold the regulator to account.

The Building Safety Regulator announced the appointment on 19 August 2026. The Residents' Panel is not an advisory group the regulator convened for itself. It is a statutory committee established under the Building Safety Act 2022, and it exists so that the experience of people living in higher-risk buildings feeds into how those buildings are regulated. The regulator describes the panel as a formal route for its members to share their views and experiences, shaping how it regulates and telling it what the effect of its work has been.

What the chair is there to do

The description of the role is worth reading exactly as it is written. The chair leads the panel in providing independent advice and in holding the regulator to account. That is a different thing from consultation, and it puts a named individual outside the organisation in a position to say publicly whether the regulator is doing what it says. The post carries no salary. It is voluntary, and Kernick will serve in a personal capacity rather than on behalf of any employer.

Her background is in high-hazard industries rather than in construction procurement. She has spent several decades working with organisations on organisational culture, systemic change and the prevention of catastrophic events. She was a resident of Grenfell Tower between 2011 and 2014. She is currently employed at Arup as Director of Strategy and Culture Realisation, where her work includes leading a global programme on safety culture.

Residents bring a unique understanding of building safety through their everyday lived experience. By bringing this knowledge and insight together with technical expertise, we can help create safer homes.

Gill Kernick, Independent Chair of the Residents' Panel

Why it matters to the people building

Charlie Pugsley, the regulator's Acting Chief Executive Officer, said that residents are central to building safety and that their experiences are, in his words, "essential to helping us build a regulatory system that is effective, proportionate and concentrates on the people it exists to protect". The word proportionate has been doing a good deal of work in the regulator's public statements this summer, and a panel chaired from outside is now positioned to test what it means in practice.

For a client, a principal designer or a principal contractor working on a higher-risk building, the practical point is about routes of escalation and evidence. Occupants of a completed building now have a standing statutory channel into the regulator, chaired by someone whose stated purpose is to hold that regulator to account. Matters that in the past would have surfaced through a managing agent, or not at all, have somewhere formal to go, and they will arrive attached to lived experience rather than to a drawing.

Nothing in the announcement changes a duty, a gateway or a deadline. What it changes is who is in the room when the regulator decides how hard to press, and that tends to show up later in the tone of correspondence rather than in the rule book.