In 2017, 72 people died in the North London tower when it caught fire with the subject of building regulations — and specifically the use of flammable materials — coming under scrutiny since.

Overseen by the Rt Hon Sir Martin Moore-Bick, Ali Akbor OBE and Thouria Istephan, the inquiry has been highly critical of regulatory standards at the time and added: “the system of regulating the construction and refurbishment of high-rise residential buildings that existed at the time of the Grenfell Tower fire was highly defective.”

The report singled out the fact construction’s regulatory oversight was jointly overseen by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Department for Business and Trade and the Home Office.

For this reason, the report is calling for a construction regulatory body to be formed, reporting to a single secretary of state.

The report added: “The establishment of such a regulator would bring a number of benefits, not least a focal point in driving a much-needed change in the culture of the construction industry.

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“It would enable information to be shared effectively between those responsible for different aspects of the industry and promote the exchange of ideas. Information on developments in the industry, both in this country and abroad, could be shared more easily between all those interested in it.”

According to the panel, this could then stretch to take on other duties such as issuing certificates and accreditation, testing construction products and carrying out research on fire safety.

Though the panel noted that parliament had since passed the Building Safety Act 2022 to regulate higher-risk buildings, it nonetheless said functions under this regulation “remain dispersed”.

As part of this, the panel has recommended the definition of a higher-risk building to be “reviewed urgently” as using the height of a building alone was “arbitrary in nature”.

The panel would also wish to see a licensing regime introduced for contractors working on such buildings, to be overseen by such a regulator.

Elsewhere, the panel has recommended that the existing statutory guidance in Approved Document B - which pertains to fire safety - be urgently reviewed due to loose wording, and a chief construction adviser be appointed to work with the secretary of state on safety issues.

In a wide-ranging report, the second phase of this inquiry also laid out several areas of reform pertaining to fire safety testing and practices by the London Fire Brigade.

In particular, the report was scathing in its criticism of the lack of oversight paid to building safety by previous governments.

It stated: “We conclude that the fire at Grenfell Tower was the culmination of decades of failure by central government and other bodies in positions of responsibility in the construction industry to look carefully into the danger of incorporating combustible materials into the external walls of high-rise residential buildings and to act on the information available to them.”