Customer satisfaction with the quality of their new homes has continued to fall, according to housebuilders’ own annual research.
The results of the survey for 2017 and published at the end of March show that 84% of respondents were satisfied with their new home – a 1% fall on last year. Satisfaction has fallen since 2010/11 when it peaked at 90%.
The Home Builders Federation (HBF) says that the industry acknowledges the slight fall in the average customer satisfaction score and “is committed to addressing it”. It points out that the number of new homes built has increased by 36% in the last three years and that “the industry is recruiting and training tens of thousands of new staff, including apprentices and more experienced workers from other sectors.
A total of 98% said they had reported snags and problems with their new homes since moving in – and of these 25% said they had reported more than 16, with 38% saying they had had more problems than they had expected.
The results come as housing quality continues to be put in the spotlight. In February housebuilder Bovis Homes announced it was slowing its construction programme by up to 15% this year to boost overall build quality and had set aside £7m to cover remedial work and compensation for poor quality construction on its homes.
The move came as the group admitted customer service standards “fell significantly” during 2016 after being dogged by complaints about homes sold unfinished and with electrical and plumbing faults.
As a result, Bovis’s star rating – which is issued to all major housebuilders following the results of the survey – has been downgraded from three stars to two.
This is the 12th year the survey has been carried out. More than 90,000 surveys were sent out and 58% of them were returned.
Other results from the survey revealed:
- 79% said they were satisfied with the service provided during the housebuilding process;
- 92% were happy with the internal design;
- 86% were happy with the external design.
Meanwhile, in changes coming in this month, Building Control bodies will be required to provide site inspection records to the building owner, on request, for all building work that has been issued with a final/completion certificate or where an initial notice has been cancelled – in a bid to improve quality.
Until now the reports compiled during the building of new houses have been unavailable to the new purchaser. The reports detail the progress of the house at key build stages and include any defects identified by the independent professional approved inspector.
Making these reports available will also highlight how many quality checks have been made and at what stage.
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Quality Housing depends on quality inspections, by experienced qualified surveyors being made part of the procurement process, adequate resources set aside for this and very importantly realistic time frames for construction of a quality nature to be achieved. Equally use of correct materials and checks such are being used need to be undertaken.. otherwise set aside £7m and go round in circles !
Don’t get me going on this subject because I could speak volumes but sites are being put into impossible positions to complete homes to the standards required. Deadlines are becoming ridiculous with 4 wks to complete properties from roof being the norm these days, just because some MD somewhere needs to get his “numbers in” – unfortunately it’s the customer who suffers
D.Diskin, you certainly hit the nail on the head in terms of my experiences. You get told just stick these guys in the house for a week and we will see how they get on. If they are totally crap we will get shot of them, but if they are half decent we will get the painter to sort it out or the renderer. Then expected to fill out the internal QA forms to say that all is wonderful so that you hit the KPI target that has been set.
Been in this game for many years now and it just does not get any better due to the boom and bust nature of the job. In boom times it’s all about getting the job done as quickly as possible and in bust times its about just getting some work at ridiculously low prices and corners are cut because the bosses are again under pressure to make some sort of margin on the job.
There are some really good sounding initiatives on paper at least that purport to dealing with quality, but sometimes this does not actually work its way onto the site, usually because in the boom time the quality guys are ignored because of the pressure to achieve handovers and in bust times the qa guys have been paid off because they are an overhead.