National House Building Council

John Howell Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is talking about quite serious snagging problems, and slightly worse. Would he, like me, put more emphasis on getting those who produce neighbourhood plans to spend more time on making sure that the design is right rather than waiting for the buildings to be built and then people finding the snagging?

[Steve Double]

I agree that we need to put more attention into the design of the housing that we are building rather than just building to the usual design standards.

The experience of many is that when they take out the 10-year warranty, the insurers routinely resort to delay and obfuscation, denying and hindering legitimate claims for truly shocking examples of poor workmanship and defects or offering cost-cutting remedial works that fall short of producing a satisfactory solution.