Too many residents moving into brand new homes in Basingstoke and around the country experience problems with "build quality". Instead of being able to enjoy the luxury of a new home no one else has lived in, residents are all too often fighting with builders and property developers to get their new home to the standard promised in the glossy brochures and advertisements. Some problems are "cosmetic " and are quickly fixed but others can be structural and require significant intervention, coming to light perhaps months after the new homes has been handed over to the purchaser. Problems appear not only with new homes, but also the design and administration of the developments they are built on. Many residents say it feels like a "David and Goliath " fight when they are up against multi-national house builders who now build most new homes, squeezing out more, smaller, local house builders every year. New home owners can often feel unable to speak out in public for fear of damaging the value of their property. Basingstoke has built more homes than almost any other part of the country for more than 5 decades, so this is an issue I have been dealing with for a number of years and something I held a Parliamentary Inquiry into as Vice Chair of All Party Parliamentary Group for Excellence in the Built Environment.
During the inquiry we took evidence from housebuilders, consumer groups, insurance companies and homebuyers. Importantly, the Government accepted a number of the important recommendations made to redress the imbalance between buyers and sellers, including establishing a New Homes Ombudsman and making reports compiled by Approved Inspectors during the building of new houses available to the new home purchaser. The New Homes Ombudsman was set up last year and house builders are gradually signing up to be membership of this scheme which gives new home owners better redress when things go wrong, over and above the existing new homes warranty and insurance schemes. I hope this scheme will make property developers far more careful about how they monitor build quality from now on. And its worth every purchaser checking whether their developer has signed up to the New Home Ombudsman Scheme before they buy.
I continue to receive correspondence from Basingstoke residents as they encounter problems with the quality of their newly built homes. So, together with local Councillors, Jenny Vaux, Simon Minas-Bound, Diane Taylor and County Councillor Stephen Reid, I recently held a meeting to hear directly from residents about the types of problems they continue to experience with quality of their new homes. I am taking those specific concerns to the property developers involved. If you are tackling problems with a new estate or the build quality of a new home and feel I could help then please get in touch. I'm happy to share my experience of addressing problems from road adoptions to snagging.
