The government has published recordings and a written summary of webinars held on 1 July and 30 July 2026 on the proposed UK memorial for those affected by the infected blood scandal. According to the GOV.UK update, the sessions were used to report on recent work, set out a proposed location and draft guiding principles, and gather further feedback from affected people and families. That matters because the memorial is still being shaped through consultation rather than presented as a settled design. At this stage, the committee is testing whether its current approach reflects what those most directly affected want a UK memorial to represent and how it should function in practice.
According to the government summary, the Infected Blood Memorial Committee was appointed in October 2025 and includes members with direct lived experience. The source says that membership covers all routes of transmission and all four nations of the UK, which is significant for a process that has to balance national recognition with a single UK-wide memorial proposal. Since its appointment, the committee has concentrated first on commemorative events. The first, held at Church House in London on 19 November 2025, was used to begin a national conversation on memorialisation and gather early views on themes, locations and the emotions the memorial should convey. The second, held at St Paul’s Cathedral on 19 May 2026, marked the eve of the second anniversary of the Inquiry report and was intended to recognise all those impacted by the scandal.
The committee’s work is now moving from commemorative events to permanent memorial delivery. The GOV.UK summary says memorials are already established or planned in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England, with a further memorial at Treloar’s school. It also notes that the Inquiry’s Memorial is now permanently housed at Manchester University. Within that structure, the committee has agreed that the overarching UK memorial should be located in England because separate memorials already exist or are planned elsewhere in the UK. The remaining question is where in England that UK memorial should sit, and the webinars were used to explain the committee’s current thinking on that point.
The committee’s present working hypothesis is that the UK memorial should be in London. According to the webinar summary, that view is based on feedback gathered before, during and after the Church House event, with London emerging as the most popular option even though the committee accepts that no single site will satisfy every member of the affected community. The source adds a useful qualification. In feedback received before the Church House event, only two respondents said a memorial should not be in London at all. Far more commonly, people argued that memorial provision should not stop at London. The committee’s answer is a distributed model: a UK memorial in England alongside separate memorials in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and at Treloar’s school.
The draft guiding principles are intended to do more than provide ceremonial language. The government summary says they are meant to express what the community wants the UK memorial to reflect and what visitors should experience there. They are also expected to guide whichever design team is appointed, giving the eventual memorial brief a clearer foundation in community evidence. Five principles have been proposed: truth, justice and reflection; remembrance and recognition; inclusivity and UK-wide accessibility; a living and evolving space; and transparency and stewardship. In plain terms, that points to a memorial that is expected to acknowledge harm accurately, recognise different experiences across the UK, remain accessible beyond a single location debate and be managed in a way that commands public trust over time.
For affected people and families, the current consultation is one of the points at which process can still change substance. Location affects symbolism and access. The principles affect how the scandal is explained, whose experiences are recognised and how the memorial is looked after in the years ahead. The government’s own summary makes clear that these choices are being treated as design questions and governance questions at the same time. The committee has invited people to respond through an online questionnaire by Monday 10 August 2026. The GOV.UK page also recognises that not everyone has online access and asks others to help submit feedback on behalf of those who cannot do so directly. Recordings of both webinar sessions remain available, which means those unable to attend can still review the material before responding.