Tag Archives: house builders

Why are private roads so common on new housing developments?

“The council do not adopt new housing estates anymore”

Private roads (as defined by Sections 203 to 237 (Part XI) of the Highways Act 1980) are a highway not maintainable at public expense. The local highway authority is therefore under no obligation to pay for its maintenance. Responsibility for the cost of maintaining a private road rests with the frontages – the owners of properties with frontages on such roads.

Flooded road at Bovis

Bovis development – Homes finished but not the road!

It is now becoming increasingly common on new housing developments that roads and other public areas are not being taken over and adopted by Local Authorities. With the roads and landscaping areas remaining private ownership, all new-build homebuyers on these developments are legally responsible for their maintenance, repair and insurance, paid for via years of ongoing, potentially ever increasing, annual management charges.

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No Regulator or Ombudsman for complaints about house builders

It is not just house building that has dissatisfied customers. However,  most other industries have an Ombudsman and official Regulator.

If you bought a new home in the last ten years, the following statements will have a familiar ring to them. After all, the house building industry has a dreadful reputation for both quality and customer service, yet makes every effort to smokescreen and spin the opposite.

  • “Stop solving problems…just make the customer happy”
  • “staff are under pressure to bat away complaints and instead focus on appeasing callers to boost satisfaction ratings”
  • “persuading customers to believe all is fine is more important than getting to the bottom of their problems”
  • “All [the company] care about right now is the net promoter score. Staff are rated on this survey it sends out after a call or web chat. Well actually, on the first question only, “How would you rate [the company] to a friend?”
  • “one of the advisors I spoke to made promises they didn’t deliver. I wonder if this is the way they are trained – to reassure the customer but actually not to do anything.”
  • “other support departments are unhelpful and more interested in their own KPI, pretending they care about customers, but the reality is they are treating them appallingly”

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Have Persimmon Tried To Buy A Better HBF Star Rating?

Can buyers trust HBF  builder Star Ratings?

The HBF National new home customer satisfaction survey is now in its eleventh year. The house builder star ratings (awarded by the HBF) “are allocated according to the proportion responding Yes..” to Question 1 of the survey: “Would you recommend your builder to a friend?…. Yes or No”    The more that respond “Yes”, the better the builder’s star rating.

During research for a previous article concerning claims made by the HBF in the 2016 survey results, I considered the possibility that builders’ sales and site management may be influencing their buyers to respond more favourably in the NHBC 8-week survey. After enquiring on social media, buyers from Britain’s two largest house builders, Persimmon and Barratt, who together built over 31,000 new homes last year, publicly expressed their opinions and claims:

Persimmon HBF SurveyJP (16 October 2015) said: “I’ve bought a recent new build from Persimmon and o boy what a joke their after sales are. I would like to point out I love my flat it’s them that annoy me. We have all been bullied and harassed to tick the first box on the NHBC survey that we would recommend a friend. Obviously didn’t tick it and because I naively ticked share my opinions Persimmon are now treating me like dirt……They were ringing us Saturday and Sunday and I quote “If I do you a favour now, you can do me a favour and tick the first box” They didn’t give a **** about our problems just whether we had said yes or no.”

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HBF Survey Shows New Home Satisfaction Levels Are Falling

HBF  Customer Satisfaction Survey Results 2016

The waiting is over. The results are in,  and the winner is……. well pretty much the whole house building industry if you believe the accompanying Home Builders Federation (HBF) editorial headlined “Homeowner satisfaction with new homes remains high.”

The HBF use the same phrases every year, irrespective of the survey results to market new homes. Why else would the HBF list on the front page their “key benefits of new homes” for the last four years, including the claim that “new homes are built to a higher standard than ever before and the customer satisfaction survey results reflect this” – well not over the last three years they don’t! Since 2013, the key satisfaction questions have provided results that show a marked decline from 91% in 2013 to 85% in 2016!HFB Survey Results

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The Consumer Code For Home Builders Is Failing New Homebuyers

PrintClose examination of the 2015 published case studies for Consumer Code for Home Builders Adjudication Scheme (CCHBAS) shows exactly what is wrong with the house building industry. It is now time for a New Homes Ombudsman to independently deal with homebuyers complaints and award justifiable and fair levels of compensation. At present, the maximum new homebuyers can claim using the CCHBAS is £15,000. The maximum compensation for “inconvenience” is just £250 – this being all that was awarded to a quarter (27%) of the successful claimants in 2015.

A total of 47 complaints made by new homebuyers were adjudicated in 2015. Of these, 41 were successful or successful ‘in part’ due to a total of 110 violations over 17 different Code requirements. Only one Code requirement (3.4) was not mentioned in any of the case studies.

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HBF mislead the public with misinformation, spin and ignorance on BBC Radio 4 “You and Yours”

“There are lies damned lies and statistics”…Mark Twain

HBF logo 1A spokesman for the Home Builders Federation (HBF) made some exaggerated, misleading and  untrue statements regarding homebuyers’ satisfaction and protection when interviewed for the BBC Radio 4 “You and Yours” programme on new-build homes aired on 2 March 2016. These merit detailed clarification and rebuttle.

The BBC reporter said that “the house building industry says that only around 1% of complaints are around serious issues, structural faults for example and that generally standards are very high.”  Even if true, it would still indicate that out of the 143,560 new homes built in 2015, “around” 1,435 will have structural faults that cannot be “guaranteed” not to crack, creak, crumble or fall down, requiring major remedial works. Often this means the new homeowner has to move into temporary accommodation as is the case with Evelyn Lallo who has been in ‘temporary’ accommodation since June last year whilst Taylor Wimpey carry out extensive remedial structural work.

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Quality compromised in rush to build new homes

At last! Peter Redfern admits quality is being compromised in the rush to build new homes

Pete RedfernTaylor Wimpey CEO Peter Redfern has said that the Government’s target to build a million homes by 2020 is unachievable and quality will be compromised if the industry does try to meet it. Well if anyone should know about compromising the quality of new homes it’s Redfern! Taylor Wimpey has a terrible reputation for building poor quality homes and when their customers complain, an equally poor record and attitude to fixing these defects. This, despite the claims made on Taylor Wimpey’s website including: “The standard of home building in the UK has never been higher than it is today.”   ” it’s like buying a brand new car and driving it out of the showroom” Only with a new car it is unlikely to have as many problems as a new Taylor Wimpey home!

Only last November, Taylor Wimpey were extensively featured on the Dispatches Documentary “Britain’s Nightmare New Homes.” In 2012 Taylor Wimpey were again panned on the BBC Watchdog programme.

The company’s unhappy buyers regularly lambast the builder on social media with the twitter feed #thinkwimpeythinktwice. On 5th December 2015,  BBC South today recently featured the story of Evelyn Lallo who has been living in temporary home since June 2015, whilst Taylor Wimpey sorts out serious defects.

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Councils to tax house builder’s landbank to force them to build

An end to Landbanking? Councils demand the power to tax housebuilders who sit on land and block housebuilding

The Local Government Association said councils should have the power to charge big companies that sit on sites with planning approval for new homes.

The Local Government Association says Councils should be given the power to tax developers for each home yet to be completed to unlock around 475,000 units which are yet to be started. The proposal is that full council tax should apply to housebuilders sitting on development sites where new homes have been given the green light from the date planning permission expires. That would mean Britain’s large housebuilders would need to complete their sites or pay council tax on every unfinished new home within three years after gaining planning permission.

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APPG Inquiry Into Quality Of New Homes

APPG Inquiry Second session: – What we suggested.

Houses of ParliamentThe majority of those that made submissions to this APPG inquiry into the “Quality of New Build Housing in England” were from either commercial organisations or institutions with a vested interest in or close affiliation to the house building industry. Their presentations would appear to be focused away from the actual problem – housebuilders’ poor workmanship standards and inadequate levels of customer care – with their emphasis on their own operations and/or sustainability and energy conservation. However, the committee were given presentations by what the APPG Secretariat (CIC) deemed “concerned citizens” four in the second session and one in the last session.

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Housebuilding Prestigious “Bodgers” Awards 2015

Bodge the builder – can they fix it?

bodger trophyWell probably yes, but they will move heaven and earth to avoid doing so. It is at this time of year that I like to produce a light-hearted article, poking fun at the general house building industry. However the increasing  poor quality of new homes and the lack of any discernible after sales service mean that most new home buyers have experiences that are as far from funny as you can get.

Nevertheless, this year I am proud to announce the inaugural winners of the “BODGERS” awards. These are the awards for the very worse in everything housebuilding that I have come across over the last twelve months.

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