Dame Judith Hackitt

Engineer and former chair of the UK Health and Safety Executive

Expertise

Safety

Location

United Kingdom

My highlights

Chairing the UK’s Health and Safety Executive from 2007 to 2016

Chairing the independent review of building regulations and fire safety following the Grenfell Tower disaster

Being appointed a Dame in the Queen’s New Year Honours in 2016

Why you might’ve heard of Dame Judith Hackitt

Dame Judith Hackitt is a British engineer and civil servant.

From 2007 to 2016, she chaired the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the national regulator responsible for preventing work-related death, injury and ill health.

She’s well known for leading the independent review of building regulations and fire safety following the Grenfell Tower disaster in 2017, otherwise known as the Hackitt review.

Her final report, titled Building a Safer Future, was published in May 2018 and made 50 recommendations to raise safety standards in the construction industry.

The changes aimed to improve transparency, accountability and the flow of information between stakeholders in the industry.

The UK government accepted Dame Judith’s recommendations in full, which led to the drafting of the Building Safety Bill. In 2022, the bill was enacted and it became the Building Safety Act.

The independent Building Safety Regulator (BSR) enforces the act, overseeing the safety, standards, design and management of all buildings.

The UK government described these measures as the “biggest change in building safety in a generation”.

We must commit to speaking up on moral and ethical grounds when we know things are not as they should be.
Dame Judith Hackitt

Learn more about Dame Judith

Career

Dame Judith studied chemical engineering at Imperial College London, graduating in 1975.

Her first role was as a process engineer for Exxon Chemicals, working at the Fawley Refinery in Hampshire, England.

She worked there for 15 years, then joined Harcros Chemicals as operational director of its pigments business.

Her career began to focus more on safety and risk as she progressed to become the group risk manager.

In 1998, she joined the UK's Chemical Industries Association, where she acted as director general from 2002 to 2005.

She then relocated to Brussels to work for its European counterpart, the European Chemical Industries Council.

In 2007, back in the UK, she became the chair of the Health and Safety Commission, which merged with the Health and Safety Executive in 2009.

She led the executive until 2016, when she took over as chair of the Engineering Employer’s Federation (EEF) (now known as Make UK), the manufacturing trade body. She stepped down from the role in 2022.

She also chaired Enginuity, an engineering skills charity, until August 2024, and the UK’s Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) until February 2025.

She was a non-executive director of HS2 Ltd from 2019 to 2023.