How to write construction marketing content to comply with CCPI guidelines

I recently had a crash course in what the CCPI guidelines really mean in practice for construction product manufacturers. On the surface,these guidelines seem to make it a real challenge to market construction products in the traditional way.

However, having gone through the process of writing strictly within those and other guidelines, that’s not necessarily true.

It’s likely that these guidelines will become even stricter in the future in the UK for a number of reasons. Not least, the fact that overblown claims and distorted information given for sales purposes appears to have played a role in the Grenfell disaster.

So, with that in mind, here is some background, techniques and tips to keep construction product content compelling without falling foul of CCPI guidelines.

What are the CCPI guidelines?

The Code for Construction Product Information (CCPI) guidelines are designed to “raise standards in construction product information and marketing and drive positive culture change in the manufacturing and supply sector in relation to product information and marketing.”

In practical terms, that means everything you write about your products must be:

Clear
Accurate
Accessible
Up to date
Unambiguous

Vagueness and guesswork is out, certainty and verifiable claims are in. This should always have been the case and it’s crazy that it wasn’t – but it is now.

So, how can construction product manufacturers, merchants and distributors respond to it? What do you actually have to do with your content marketing to be compliant with the guidelines?

1 – Have a good product

This does not sound like helpful advice, I know, but bear with me.

By a “good product” I mean one which has been tested so you can verify all your claims. To comply with CCPI guidelines you will need to provide evidence of any claims you make about:

Carbon binding
Fire testing
Acoustic ratings
Thermal conductivity

And so on. If your product is as good as claimed, you need to be able to prove it. If you can do that, it makes it a lot easier to stay within CCPI guidelines without losing too much from your marketing.

2 – Be prepared to hedge your statements

You’d be surprised at the sorts of things you can’t say. It’s all stuff that feels very standard, indeed vital, for construction product content marketing.

Is a product ‘natural’? ‘Environmentally friendly’? ‘Sustainable’?

Not anymore!

It’s now: “A product which can contribute to a project’s sustainability strategy when specified and installed correctly, thanks to [……ways it offers sustainability benefits].”

Your product is no longer one which provides ‘excellent acoustics’. Instead, it provides an exact acoustic rating which can be proven with testing data, and it can play a role in improving a building’s acoustic performance when specified and installed appropriately.

Basic ground rules are to stay away from:

Definitive statements
Vagueness of any kind
Unevidenced claims
Descriptive words which imply something you cannotprove.

3 – Don’t leave content to the last minute

The rules have changed and the editing/review process is inevitably going to be longer. If you need to write construction content in line with CCPI guidelines, I strongly advise you to start as early as you can.

Don’t underestimate this!

Is CCPI compliance mandatory or just advisable?

For now it is advisory, but it’s going towards being mandatory. Firms are well advised to get their communications in line with CCPI guidelines now to avoid major headaches in the future. The government is very, very keen to get significant, institutional failures in the construction products regulatory system fixed following Dame Judith Hackett’s damning Grenfell Tower inquiry.

The government’s Construction Products Reform Green Paper, published in February 2025, says: “This government is proposing a series of ambitious and far-reaching reforms aimed at enhancing safety, ensuring accountability, and fostering innovation and growth and therefore confidence across the construction sector.”

And: “Trust in UK construction products is vital to support economic growth, infrastructure delivery and our ambition of building 1.5 million new homes over this parliament.”

That’s two extremely strong motivations for change, and you can expect it to come.

The Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) has also released new guidelines recently to address the same problem.