Tag Archives: quality

Defective Taylor Wimpey new home causes injury to 10-year-old girl

Enough is enough! What will it take before government finally acts, not only to end the misery faced by the majority of people that buy new homes, but also to drastically reduce the likelihood of another death caused by a defect in a new home? Last week a defect in a Taylor Wimpey new home injures a 10 year old girl.

Oliver Colvile MP

Time for action? APPG Chair Oliver Colvile MP

Since the APPG Inquiry published its Report  ‘Into the Quality of New Homes’  three weeks ago, there has been zero coverage of its recommendations in national media. On a personal level, I have written to every single one of the 650 MPs asking for their support and to lobby the DCLG for the introduction of a New Homes Ombudsman. Just one MP has replied so far. Is anyone prepared to do anything before someone else is killed in a defective new home?

On 15th October 2005, a four-year-old boy died from chest injuries after a 50kg (110lb) stone mantelpiece over a fireplace fell on top of him at his Persimmon-built family home in Coulthard Close, Towcester.

In February 2008, Elouise Littlewood was 26 when she died in the flat she owned with Notting Hill Housing Trust built by Barratt Homes at their Bedfont Lakes complex in Hounslow. A post-mortem carried out on the body found the concentration of carbon monoxide in her blood was 77 per cent. Her lodger, Simon Kilby, was left with permanent brain damage after he was discovered unconscious on the sofa.

Only this morning I learned that on 28 July 2016, a radiator had detached from a wall and had fallen on 10 year-old Gemma Fever in the kitchen of the family’s Taylor Wimpey new home at their Rackenford Meadows development in Tiverton, Devon.

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APPG Inquiry – ten recommendations to improve the quality of new homes

The All Party Parliamentary Group Inquiry Into the Quality of New Homes In England has made ten recommendations and says house builders should be “upping their game and putting consumers at the heart of the business model. Alongside this, Government should use its influence to promote quality at every opportunity.” The cross party committee of MPs and construction experts called on the Government [DCLG] to set up a New Homes Ombudsman to mediate in disputes between homebuyers and housebuilders. This is the number one “key recommendation” of 10 recommendations setting out measures to improve the quality of workmanship in new homes and provide consumers with easier and cheaper forms of redress, to get defects and problems fixed. 

APPG Inquiry Report Recommendations:

Recommendation 1: DCLG should initiate steps to set up a New Homes Ombudsman.

APPG Inquiry Report Recommendations“The role would include mediating disputes between consumers and their builders or warranty providers to offer a quick resolution procedure paid for by a housebuilders’ levy. We see this is as the key recommendation to provide more effective consumer redress, if things go wrong, and a good way of applying pressure on housebuilders and warranty providers to deliver a better quality service. Our view is that the new service should be funded by a levy on the sector, but it would need to be completely independent and replace the dispute resolution service offered as part of the Consumer Code for Home Builders. Our recommendation picks up on one made by the Office of Fair Trading, in its 2008 market study into the house building industry, which suggested that, if the industry failed to make satisfactory progress, it would recommend further intervention in the form of a statutory redress mechanism for new homebuyers funded by a levy on the industry.  

Although funded by the construction industry [housebuilders] it should be a public body not under the industry’s control. It should provide a cheap, quick and effective system of redress and have power to enforce standards and award compensation. This would put pressure on housebuilders to up their game in the first place and spur them on to improve workmanship and increase levels of service.” 

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More homes – Fewer complaints : APPG Inquiry Report

APPG Inquiry ReportMPs call for the DCLG to set up a New Homes Ombudsman in APPG Inquiry Report published on 13 July 2016.

At long last seven months after the last evidence session on 14 December 2015, the All Party Parliamentary Group for Excellence in the Built Environment (APPGEBE) has finally published the findings and recommendations in the report following its: “Inquiry Into the Quality of New Build Housing in England”

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House builders are cheating new home air leakage testing

Since 2006, Part L of the Building Regulations – The Conservation of Fuel and Power in England and Wales – has required mandatory air leakage testing of new buildings including homes. These regulations were further revised in 2010. But this does not mean every new home will be subject to an air leakage test to comply even under the latest 2010 Part L.

What is air leakage testing?

Air Leakage TestingAir leakage testing basically checks that a new home is air tight and will not let in draughts or provide a route for heat to escape through gaps in the structure. After sealing up all required vents to windows and extractors, air is then drawn out of the home via a large fan in an external doorway, with the pressure monitored for a set period of time to produce a measurement of the amount of air that leaks back into the home being tested.

So you would think that since 2010, all new homes would be relatively air tight, free of draughts and cheap to heat as a result?

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BBC Radio 4 ‘You and Yours’ – What needs to be done to protect consumers in the housing industry?

BBC Radio 4Earlier today, BBC Radio 4 You and Yours interviewed Oliver Colvile MP, chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group Inquiry into the Quality of New Build Housing in England, looking into measures that would improve the quality of new-builds and how to give greater protection to new homebuyers.

Oliver Colvile MP told the programme:

Oliver Colvile MP“I am afraid I’ve had an awful lot of constituents who have come to see me and talk to me about how they don’t feel they have got the product which they thought they had actually bought.”

“The consumer wants to see, they want to actually see something that is going to deliver a quick and easy resolution as far as their contractual decisions have been made. After all, when we go and buy a new home it normally is the most expensive thing biggest investment which we make in the whole of our lives, for them [HBF] to be complacent I have to say, to say its 85% [satisfied with their homes] well what about the 15% then who have actually had a fairly a bad deal out of it. The other thing as well is that I don’t think the house builders generally understand that they’re dealings with the person who is buying it [the new home] isn’t necessarily always particularly brilliant. The consumer feels that actually somewhat concerned that they are actually banging their head against a brick wall, by trying to get the builders to take some notice of all of this.”

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Preliminary announcement of findings and recommendations of the APPG Inquiry into the Quality of New Build Housing in England

The waiting is nearly over.   Its official!  The New Home Ombudsman is coming! A culmination of two years’ campaigning and ten years dedicated work highlighting the plight of UK new homebuyers.

I spoke. They listened!

The APPG Inquiry report is being finalised and is due for publication in “at the beginning of June 2016.”

APPG Announcment 1On Tuesday 17 May 2016, chair Oliver Colvile MP made a speech at the JCT Parliamentary Reception highlighting the findings and the main recommendations.

He said that he, and “many of his Parliamentary colleagues across the country have had new homebuyers coming to their MP’s surgeries to complain about the way their new home was built. Although the report hasn’t been finalised, I can confirm that the Inquiry Committee has agreed on a number of recommendations and I would like to share a few of those with you”

  1. A New Homes Ombudsman should be set up. This would mediate disputes between consumers and their builders or warranty providers to offer a quick resolution procedure.
  2. Standardised house building sales contracts should be enforced, meaning uncertainty surrounding bespoke builders’ contracts would be removed.
  3. There should be a mandatory right for buyers to inspect and, should they wish, carry out a full survey prior to financial completion. More details of this particular point will be announced in the final report.
  4. To improve transparency, builders should be required to provide homebuyers with a comprehensive information pack. This would include plain English explanations so that homebuyers can understand exactly what they are buying.”

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Persimmon counter claim against their buyer for £8,000 for the cost of repairing his house!

Persimmon issue counter claim to recover cost of repairing new house in Sunderland.

Persimmon Homes, rated just three stars by their own customers in the industry’s  “satisfaction survey,” appear go out of their way to be confrontational and intransigent to any customers who take issue with the builder. The phrase “the Customer is always right” isnt even on their radar if this story from the North East Evening Chronicle is anything to go by.

Vince Wareham Persimmon Render Photo

An unhappy Vince Wareham outside his Persimmon new home at Alexander Park in Sunderland.

New homebuyer Vince Wareham told the Chronicle about his shock when he learned Persimmon were taking legal action against him in an £8,000 counter claim, after he decided to take the house builder to court, claiming £2,950 in compensation for remedial works carried out on his new home.

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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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Barratt withdraw its unique five-year warranty

Last July, Mark Clare retired as CEO of Barratt Developments after a nine-year stint in charge. Within a year of David Thomas taking over the helm, Barratt’s unique five-year new home warranty is no more, withdrawn in November 2015 – six years after being first being introduced.cropped-Barratt-9ss.jpgIn their press release on 17 November 2009 Barratt, Britain’s biggest house builder by volume, proudly proclaimed that their new homes will be covered by a five-year guarantee of fixtures and fittings: “Items covered at no extra cost to the buyer will include appliances such as washing machines and refrigerators, kitchen units, wardrobes, the central heating system, fires, doors, windows, the hot and cold plumbing system, shower doors, sanitary ware and taps, ironmongery, electrical system, internal/external drainage, renewable energy installation (if fitted), and even the boundary brick walls and the driveway” said Barratt.

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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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