Construction Standards: New Build Homes

Lee Anderson Excerpts

Tuesday 25th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Reform)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) on securing this important debate. I am very happy about it, because for about 10 years Persimmon Homes, which she mentioned, has been on my radar both as a local councillor and as a Member of Parliament.

We have an estate in Huthwaite in my constituency called the Mill Lane estate, which was built by Persimmon some 12 or 13 years ago. The standard of work was, to say the least, quite shoddy. There were lots of snagging issues when people moved in, but it is too late then—they have paid the money, they have got the mortgage and they are in these houses with dodgy patios, patio doors that do not fit, kitchens falling to pieces, uneven floors, walls that are not lined up and doors that do not fit. When they complain to Persimmon, it takes ages to come out and see people and put the work right.

In fact, Persimmon did not come out at all, so I ended up, as a councillor, putting in formal complaints on behalf of the residents who had snagging problems. I did it through the previous MP’s office, and lo and behold, once the MP got involved and we put in formal complaints, Persimmon started to come round to people’s houses and put the problems right. However, it should not be for somebody who has just forked out thousands and thousands of pounds, and made themselves skint to get their new dream home, to have to go to the local MP or councillor to complain about a brand-new but shoddy home and try to get the work put right. The owner of a brand-new home would expect it to be right first time. Imagine waking up one morning and seeing all these problems after being in there for a week. That has been happening to residents in my constituency.

We have another Persimmon estate in Ashfield—the Owston Road estate in Annesley. Persimmon—I will name and shame it because I think it is important to do so, as it has been dreadful to my constituents—decided to put a road on this estate made out of semi-permeable blocks of stone. It is not a normal road, but a type of block paving that has been put on the whole estate. Nottinghamshire county council had never seen this block paving before, so it quite rightly refused to adopt the estate, because once it adopted the estate, it would be responsible for the block paving. They have been arguing the toss for over 10 years, and I have been working on this for 10 years as a councillor and an MP. Every year or so, Persimmon staff turn up on site with their high-vis jackets and their boots, and they meet me and speak to residents. They promise to have a plan to put it all right within six months, and six months later Persimmon has swapped staff or sacked somebody, and another person turns up.

This has been going on for 10 years, and I have a resident called Mr Warhurst—Alan Warhurst—who has been campaigning with me for the past 10 years. I actually feel sorry for this bloke, because it has got to the point where he thinks he is banging his head against a brick wall. The killer is that when people try to sell their houses, they may struggle. Some of them may struggle to get a mortgage on these houses, because the estate is in essence a private one. Nobody has adopted it, and nobody wants to adopt it or the highway, because it could cost hundreds of thousands of pounds to put this work right.

I have a solution. I am not sure whether the Minister will agree with me, but I strongly suggest this for house builders such as Persimmon. Don’t get me wrong; I have had this with Ben Bailey, Avant and other house builders, but they have been much better and much more forthcoming in putting right the repairs. I suggest that if we have persistent problems with a house builder, we should reject any planning application from it in the future, until it starts to build houses correctly. I think that is the only way to stop these people.

When a council adopts a new estate, it takes on full responsibility, and the house builder knows that. However, once the house owner has purchased the house—once they are in their house, have the keys and have a mortgage —they are locked into that house and they are stuck with it. They cannot really battle with the house builder, whereas a local authority can. The local authority holds all the aces. It can say, “No, we’re not adopting that road, these pavements or these street lights until you’ve built them to our standards.” It is the same with the local water authority, such as Severn Trent, which can say to the house builder, “No, we’re not adopting that sewer or that freshwater supply until you’ve built them to our standards.”

[John Lamont]

The hon. Member is doing an excellent job of highlighting the problems with new house developments in his constituency. The National House Building Council will in many cases provide a guarantee backing up the developer to fix the repairs that are required, but I have certainly had difficulties with the NHBC in the past. Has he any reflections on the role it plays?

[Lee Anderson]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, which, as usual, is spot on. He is quite right, and I have had loads of these problems over the years. In fact, I had a big project running on a few of my new house builds in Ashfield a few years ago, and I was getting exactly that problem. People think they have a 10-year guarantee, but when they try to get in touch with the NHBC to get the work put right, they find it is next to useless. That is why the people on these new housing estates are contacting their local councillor and their local MP in great numbers.

While I am here, I will give right hon. and hon. Members a tip. Because of what the hon. Member for Sherwood Forest has said, if they get a new housing estate in their patch—I am getting one shortly—they should go and knock on the doors, deliver a snagging leaflet or do a survey to ask people whether they are satisfied with their house builder. Hon. Members would be surprised how many surveys we get back from constituents who are deeply unhappy with the state of their house.

[Alison Bennett]

I have done exactly that. I sent out a street letter and flushed out all sorts of problems with new build estates. Problems with management companies sometimes come up in those surveys. Is that something that the hon. Gentleman wants to comment on?

[Lee Anderson]

It is. We have had problems with management companies in one of my estates in Kirkby-in-Ashfield over the maintenance of a local park and some of the green spaces that come with these new house builds.

I want to touch on what the hon. Member for Sherwood Forest said about our problems with Ashfield district council. We have not had a local plan in Ashfield for nearly 25 years. Each time the administration changes, it falls out over a local plan. That has meant that developers can apply to build anywhere in Ashfield, and they are attacking our green spaces at great pace. In 2018, we were promised a local plan to protect our green spaces within three years by the current independent-led council, the Ashfield Independents, because they had ripped up the old plan. Fast forward seven years and there is no local plan. One has been put in, but it does not protect our green spaces. It will allow developers to run roughshod over our green spaces in Ashfield. It will allow developers of new houses to come in and build their shiny new houses on green fields, which will lead to loads of problems. In my constituency, we will get loads of people complaining about their new build houses.

As the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) said, people expect to have the internet connected to their houses these days, and some of these housing companies are deliberately misleading their customers. They do not admit that there will not be any broadband in the houses they are selling. Most people assume that in this day and age, it is another utility like their gas, electric and water. It has been a complete nightmare for some of my constituents on the newer estates. I will close there, and I thank the hon. Member for Sherwood Forest once again for bringing this debate to Westminster Hall.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Lee Dillon (Newbury) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) on securing this important debate and on her powerful description of the impact on her constituent, Sara, of the 70 remaining defects in her home.

Given that 89% of homeowners are satisfied with the quality of their home, we might think that all is well in the world of house building, but throughout the debate hon. Members have highlighted where it simply does not work for our constituents. Just scratching at the surface clearly shows the different reality beneath, because alongside that satisfaction rate sits the stark statistic that 27% of new homeowners report 16 or more defects in their home. That is not minor snagging; it is a quarter of new homeowners moving into homes that are riddled with problems.

As the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) set out, existing homeowners are affected as well. Let us be clear: this is not a new problem. Reports going back as far as the 2007 Callcutt review warned about poor-quality construction and inadequate warranties, yet here we are in 2025, debating the same failures.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett) pointed out that confidence must be beyond question, but time and again we have seen developers prioritising profit over quality. The consequences can be devastating. Look at Solomon’s Passage in Southwark, completed in 2012 and condemned just six years later due to serious defects. In my Newbury constituency, a new-build estate, Lancaster Park in Hungerford, does not meet the expectations of the people paying a high price to live there. These are not one-offs; these are symptoms of a broken system.

We cannot ignore that the UK has some of the worst-insulated homes in Europe. Six million households in the UK are living in fuel poverty, including 3,000 in my constituency, yet new homes are still built with gas boilers and inadequate insulation. Minister, we cannot keep building homes that are outdated the moment they are finished. The Government had the opportunity to mandate future home standards in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, but they did not do so.

The Liberal Democrats would change that. Zero carbon must be the default. Every new home should have solar panels and renewable energy as standard. Planning must include climate resilience and flood mitigation, as the hon. Member for Congleton (Mrs Russell) mentioned in reference to section 42 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. Retrofitting must be a priority.

[Lee Anderson]

The hon. Gentleman talks about all these great ideas for what the Lib Dems will do—fitting solar panels and heat pumps and stuff like that—but does he trust house builders to do that to a high standard?

[Mr Dillon]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, which gets to the heart of this debate. Whether it is building a damp-proof course correctly or installing cutting-edge climate technology, the Government have a responsibility to ensure that a strong regulator holds developers to account when they fail. As Members around the Chamber have said, we have seen failure, but that should not prevent us as Members of this House from setting a high bar for developers to reach.

Finally, I shall talk about infrastructure. It is not enough to build houses; we need to build communities, yet too often we see developments spring up without the GP surgeries, schools, public spaces or public transport links that people rely on, or with highways that cannot be adopted, as the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) highlighted. That is why we Liberal Democrats are calling for a planning system that guarantees delivery alongside housing targets. That means mandatory commitments from developers to fund GP practices, schools and green spaces; to put public transport first—new developments should be built around sustainable travel, not car-dependency—and deploy sustainable drainage, with grey water recycling included as standard in all new builds.

Although the Government have taken positive steps, there is still much to do. Those are all things that have been proven possible. Across the country, Liberal Democrat councils have led the way, from zero-carbon homes when we ran York, to 1,300 new council houses in Portsmouth. We know what works. Now the Government must follow our lead. Every family deserves a safe, warm and high-quality home—not just a roof over their heads, but a real foundation for the future. I urge the Minister and the Government to take action. No more delays, no more excuses—just homes that work for the people who live in them.