APPG Report: More homes, fewer complaints

A report published in July 2017 by an All Party Parliamentary Group made some strong recommendations aimed at putting consumers at the heart of housebuilding.

It was sparked by a growing number of cases MPs have encountered among constituents frustrated by problems in their new homes with inadequate recourse to house builders and warranty providers to get them addressed in an affordable and straightforward manner.

The report states that the UK housebuilding industry needs to raise supply.

It also needs to ensure that the quality of new build housing is good enough for people to live in. Although a large number of home buyers are happy with the quality of their new homes, there have been too many reports of new homes that are simply uninhabitable.

Chairman of the APPG Oliver Colvile said ‘Buying a house is probably the biggest investment that many of us will make. First-time buyers are purchasing a dream which they want to be of good quality.

'We need to build more homes, but I want quality homes for quality homeowners. We also need to ensure that there is a clear process whereby developers can be held to account and are responsible for correcting any below-par workmanship as soon as possible.’

Key findings

The report sets out a series of measures to redress the imbalance between buyers and sellers, giving consumers a fairer deal and improving transparency in home buying:

• DCLG should initiate steps to set up a New Homes Ombudsman
• House building sales contracts should be standardised
• Buyers should have the right to inspect properties before completion
• Builders should be required to provide buyers with a comprehensive information pack
• There should be a review of laws governing consumer rights when purchasing new homes
• DCLG should commission a thorough review of warranties
• Housebuilders should instigate a new quality culture by adopting quality systems to ISO standards
• The industry should significantly increase skills training programmes
• A minimum standard should be set for compliance inspections
• Housebuilders should make the annual customer satisfaction survey more independent to boost customer confidence

Research undertaken as part of the report found that over half of all new private homes are built by just ten companies.

Buyers do have realistic expectations and they don’t necessarily expect their homes to be perfect, but they do expect to have effective mechanisms for redress, in order to get deficiencies rectified quickly. 

93% of buyers report problems to their builders – and of these, 35% report 11 or more problems.

However, customer satisfaction had dropped from 90% to 86% in 2015, and while this doesn’t sound much, it equates to an extra 15,500 homebuyers who were not satisfied.

You can download the full report here: More Homes Fewer Complaints.

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Read Building on Brexit: An APPG report