New Build Homes

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

I do not expect you to stay in the Chair for the whole of this Adjournment debate, Mr Speaker. You might be able to hear that I have a slightly croaky voice, so I will by necessity keep my remarks relatively brief.

I welcome the opportunity to raise this issue with the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton). It has been a recurring theme over the past few months, but perhaps that is inevitable as the Government promote house building, and because the number of both starts and completions is up significantly. There are, therefore, more new build homes with the potential to provoke complaints. My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) led a similar debate in July, and my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) is chair of the all-party group on excellence in the built environment, which is conducting an inquiry into this very issue.

I will speak on behalf of one constituent in particular, but I will also refer to others, because, sadly, the problems tend not to happen in isolation. Test Valley borough, which covers the greater part of my constituency, has followed what the Government have asked of local planning authorities. Over the past three years, Test Valley has had either the highest or the second highest number of housing completions in the whole of Hampshire, including the two cities of Southampton and Portsmouth. Test Valley has consistently been in the top 10 for housing completions across the whole of the south-east region. Unfortunately, and as one might expect, areas with high levels of house building can also have high levels of complaints from new residents.

Buying a new home is an enormous step for most people. It is exciting, challenging and stressful, probably in equal measure. I think it is true to say that moving home is one of the most stressful things that any individual, couple or family can go through, but it is also certainly exciting. How much more exciting can it be for someone than to move into a new build home that they can put their own mark on and that no one else has lived in?

My hon. Friend the Minister will be delighted to hear that, during the general election campaign earlier this year, I talked to residents at Abbotswood, a new 800-home development on the edge of Romsey. One resident invited me into her new home, which was bought with help from the Government’s Help to Buy scheme. She proudly showed me a photograph—it had pride of place in the sitting room—of her and her husband at Downing Street with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. For Lisa and her husband, there was nothing but joy in being in their own brand-new home. Sadly, however, that is not the case for everyone. I requested this debate to highlight some of the challenges facing purchasers of new build properties when things do not go according to plan.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I am conscious of the hon. Lady’s voice, so I do not want to keep her here for long. I understand that anybody who buys a new build house gets a 10-year warranty, but it is a very informal arrangement. Does she think it is time for the Government to formalise the legislation and make sure that buyers of new build homes are protected?

[Caroline Nokes]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention and I know that he also has a keen interest in this issue. The nub of the matter is the 10-year guarantee and how effectively it comes into play when there is a problem.

As a society we have become very aware of our consumer rights. When making substantial purchases we look for warranties, for quality assurance and for customer service. There is no purchase in life more substantial than buying a house, yet over the past 18 months some of my constituents have felt less protected than they would have been if they had, for example, bought a new car. The protections they believed that they had, and which they had taken for granted, assuming that they would come into action should there be a problem, have simply not had the effect any reasonable consumer would want.

We all know that with new build properties there can be snagging problems. Indeed, back in 1996 I well remember buying a new house and some minor issues needed fixing. The builder came back and sorted them out, and I remember the pride I had in that house and in being able to put my own identity on it, and how happy I was.

What about when the issues are not minor, as was the case with my constituents Evelyn and Riccardo Lallo? Some 18 months after they first identified the problems with their brand-new house, they remain in rented accommodation paying a mortgage on a house that they cannot live in. Unfortunately, they are still waiting for the builder, in this case Taylor Wimpey, to remove the undersized ceiling joists, some of the walls and the roof. To be frank, it sounds awfully like a total rebuild, and although they are in rented accommodation, one of their neighbours lived in a hotel for six months.

One of the problems I would like to draw to the Minister’s attention is the assumption by house purchasers that building control is necessarily performed by the local authority. That is not always the case. It is in some, but in many cases the building control checks are done instead by the warranty providers, such as the National House Building Council. There can be very good reasons for that. The warranty companies might prefer it, as they will then be providing the warranty for the building with which they have been involved from a very early stage. Several inspections take place at various stages, from checking the depth of foundations and making sure that cavities are the appropriate size, through to the pre-plaster check. There is a log for each inspection, which my constituents argue should be freely available automatically to the prospective purchaser.

The customer is not necessarily aware of that, and there needs to be a better understanding that a local authority building control inspector might never have seen the building, and the local authority, beyond granting planning permission, might have no direct interest in the subsequent build process. The assumption, however, is that no matter who has carried out the inspection process, problems will be flagged up throughout the process and could be amended in the build process before it moves on to the next stage.

I am conscious that my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke has raised in detail with the Minister the flaws in the inspection regime, and how that might leave the homeowner in a more vulnerable position than they had ever imagined when entering into the contract to buy a home. I do not intend to repeat those arguments. Suffice it to say that I wholly endorse her view about the need for a duty of care to be established between approved inspectors and the homebuyer, and I welcome the Ankers report in that respect, but we also need somehow to convey to purchasers that they need to be vigilant in the process, and to be aware that it might not be their local authority that has inspected the build.

In the case of my constituents, Mr and Mrs Lallo, they feel very much as if they have been pushed from pillar to post, with each one shrugging shoulders and all pointing back to the builder as the one who must rectify the problems, and that is undoubtedly right. The NHBC system and other warranty providers require the builder to rectify any problem within the first two years, and in this situation the builder, Taylor Wimpey, has accepted that it is its responsibility to replace all the joists and trusses, which had not been installed properly as required. Tonight the scaffolding is up and I understand that the roof will come off tomorrow. We must hope that the sun will be shining.

When a defect is discovered and the builder refuses to carry out the remedial work, a free resolution service is offered by the warranty providers, but what happens when the builder agrees to carry out the work but drags their feet and does not get on with the repairs? That is the point at which my constituents first contacted me. Their bright, shiny new house had unacceptable levels of vibration and investigations revealed the joists and trusses were acting independently of each other. They have to come out, all the plaster must be removed, the ceilings must be taken out and the roof will come off. They contacted the local authority, which very quickly stated that it was not its responsibility, but could find no agency to act as an intermediary between them and the builder to exert the pressure that they wanted to facilitate a speedy and appropriate remedy.

For six months, the family lived with no ceilings after they had been stripped out, walls were missing and their living room furniture was in storage. For a further six months, they have lived in rented housing, expecting at every moment work to start on the house that was meant to be their pride and joy—a home for their boys. My constituents feel that for big purchases such as houses there should also be some protection—someone to speak up on their behalf, to act as an intermediary. It is their contention that there should be some sort of ombudsman, and that idea certainly has some attraction.

My real concern is that if, as happened in the case of my constituents, fundamental structural flaws that should have been picked up in the pre-plaster inspection were missed, what can we expect as rates of house building accelerate? I hope the Minister can provide some reassurance that the inspection regime remains robust, and that the case of my constituents and their neighbours, who were similarly affected, is unusual. I say that because as house building necessarily increases, we want the owners of new homes to be happy, to have pride in their new homes and, above all, to be protected adequately should the worst happen.