Barratt, Taylor Wimpey, Redrow and Bellway are among 100 firms that have signed up to a new code of practice to ensure that complaints surrounding new build homes are resolved quickly and effectively.
The code will be overseen by industry body the New Homes Ombudsman Service which has a remit that “covers the whole period from the reservation and legal completion of a property through to after-sales and complaints management for issues during the first two years of a new home purchase”.
Elements that the code covers include:
- Banning high-pressure selling and requires that customer deposits to a builder are protected
- Developers must provide all relevant information about the home during the sales process to customers – including its tenure and any future management or service charges
- Setting out a fair reservation agreement, including a ‘cooling off’ period as well as sales contract requirements
- Allowing customers to engage a professional to carry out a pre-completion inspection of their home on their behalf
- Specifying that a home must be ‘complete’, preventing developers from paying customers to move into a new home early
The New Homes Ombudsman Service is an independent service that is free to use for homeowners, adding that its role is to “impartially assess and adjudicate on issues that have arisen that fall within the ombudsman’s scope”.
The new code the ombudsman will oversee “replaces the large number of previous codes and will seek to “simplify and boost consumer confidence”.
The service is led by Alison MacDougall who has held senior posts with the Office of the Independent Adjudicator dealing with student complaints, the Police Complaints Authority, where she dealt with serious complaints involving deaths in custody and the Dispute Service where she has had overall responsibility for the dispute resolution service relating to tenancy deposits.
The New Homes Ombudsman Service is a subsidiary of the Dispute Service, which is a not-for-profit company specialising in dispute resolution work in relation to tenancy deposits in the private rented sector and tenant-landlord mediation and conciliation for issues arising during a tenancy.
The cost of the service will be funded by the New Homes Quality Board via a levy charged to developers who have registered with the board and have adopted the code.
In August, The Competition and Markets Authority secured agreements from nine building firms that bought freeholds from Taylor Wimpy to remove their double ground rent terms, which will see a further 5,000 UK households receive refunds.
The regulator said at the time that the action was part of its ongoing investigation into ground rent cases, which began in 2019, and has so far benefited over 20,000 households.
