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The
Office of Fair Trading is to look into the house building sector
paying particular attention to the areas of regulation, planning,
competition, and customer satisfaction.
The report is due to be completed by the summer of next year and
will look into whether builders are holding back land to watch it
grow in value and the time it takes to get planning permission. It
comes at a time when there are real concerns that there are not
enough new homes being built and they are not of good enough
quality. Purchasers of new houses often have to present the
developer with a
snagging
list of faults that need to be rectified to bring their home up
to an acceptable standard of finish.
CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment)
recently published a
housing design audit that found that 29% of new developments
were so poor that they shouldn’t have received planning permission.
Less than 20% were considered to be good or very good.
This major investigation may recommend the implementation code of
practice. That would certainly be a wake up call for an industry
that is struggling to meet current building regulations never mind
the government’s goal of carbon neutral homes.
25th June 2007
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