Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of let’s get snagging if you are in the process of buying or have bought a new build property then this podcast is for you 

My Name is Ian Lively of Lively Professional services Ltd.

If you would like more information, then check out our website at www.livelyprofessionalservices.co.uk all one word

 In this week’s show I am going to be discussing 

What the New Homes Quality Board means for new build home buyers 

If you have not heard of the new homes quality board here is a little background, In 2021 the New Homes Quality Board issued a draft consultation Code of Practice document to the national house builders. 

The aim of the new code is to establish mandatory requirements which must be adopted and complied with by developers. 

From January 2022, housebuilders and developers who build new homes will be expected to register with the New Homes Quality Board (“NHQB”). 

This is now live and developers will need to complete the registration process by December 2022 to be included within the scheme. Not all developers will sign up to this as some of the smaller developers will not want to or be eligible to join

What does the code mean for house buyers?

Both the code and the New Homes Ombudsman aim to raise the quality of new build homes, this is great news and should give new house buyers better protection which they don’t have at present and improve the services house builders provide to their customers. 

It is going to be interesting to see if this is going to work in practice, but I hope it does and should give new homebuyers more protection which has been needed for a long time. It is sad to say but you have more right buying a pair of jeans than you do spending hundreds of thousands on a new home, at least you can return the jeans if you are not happy with them, there is no way you can give your newly built home back to your developer if you are not happy with it.

The New Homes Quality code of practice now replaces the old Consumer Code for Home Builders. 

The New Homes Quality Board is supposed to be an independent organisation, with the board being made up of individuals from across the industry such as solicitors, mortgage providers, developers, professional snaggers and professional organisations such as the Residential Property Surveyors Association. 

This is a definite step in the right direction along with the newly formed  New Homes Ombudsman Service which will provide independent redress for consumers with issues with their new homes. 

We will wait to see how strong they are as time goes by. I only hope they are strong enough to bring developers to task where they have poorly treated their customers and fail to hand over a quality home.

The New Homes Quality Code has four parts:

Part One

Is about the developers Selling a new home

Part two

Explains the Legal documents, Information, Inspection and completion

Part Three

Covers After Sales, Complaints Management and the New Homes Ombudsman

Part four

Covers Solvency, Legal and Jurisdiction

Sections to note

Section 2 is the one we are interested in and it is interesting to note that in section two of the New Homes Quality Code 

it says, The Developer must provide an opportunity for the Customer to visit the New Home and/or appoint a suitably qualified inspector to complete the Template Pre-Completion Inspection Checklist on their behalf, to be carried out before completion and from 5 calendar days or (Earlier by mutual agreement) after the Notice to Complete has been served. For the absence of doubt, the Template Pre-Completion Inspection Checklist is the only checklist that may be used for the Pre-Completion Inspection.

What this means is you need to make sure the surveyor or professional snagger you are going to use is suitably qualifies and is a member of the royal institute of chartered surveyors RICS or be a member of the residential property surveyor’s association the RPSA, for them to be able to carry out a Pre-Completion Inspection, otherwise the developer will not recognise or action the report and they must only use the Pre-Completion Inspection template. No other report will be accepted.

Pre-completion Inspection Checklist also states

The Developer must also inform Customers about the health and safety precautions they, or their representative must take if and when permitted to visit a live construction site. The Developer can refuse access to a live construction site to the Customer or any representative, inspector or professional acting on their behalf if health and safety precautions required by the Developer are not adhered to. What we are experienced is developers refusing the surveyor access to the roof area and they can only look in this area and not enter it to carry out a full inspection to check party walls and see if extract ducts are connected, the only thing you can check is to see if the insulation is laid flat this is only from the access panel.

As a professional snagger I can see a number of issues with the New Homes Quality Code checklist.

Having read the pre-completion checklist template and experienced the way developers are policing it, it is in my opinion extremely restrictive and does not allow you or your surveyor to raise any serious issues which could be in breach of building regulations, warranty providers tolerances or standards. 

It is purely a visual inspection, and the inspector must not deviate from this checklist for the inspection.

This is restricting snagging inspectors from using a wide range of aids such as levels, drones, thermal imaging equipment, etc, to ensure your new home is built to the current Building regulations and warranty providers standards.

Defects which fall under this category are normally ones which if not brought to the developer’s attention early are likely to have some serious cost implications for the new homeowner in the future. 

This is not acceptable, and the current draft of the checklist needs revising to allow the use of such aids to identify serious defects.  These defects  should not be a cost new home owners should have to pay because of the poor standards and quality of their new home. 

What the New Homes Quality Code checklist seems to me is once again the house building industry is manipulating the system to safeguard itself and is purposefully restricting the number of serious issues which are currently being raised by professional snaggers throughout the country, highlighting the poor quality of their houses.

I have raised the issues of the checklist with the RPSA Chairman as not being suitable and need to be changed to allow surveyors the use of any aids or equipment, they need to fully inspect newbuild homes.

 We will have to see if this makes any difference, however, the code is a step in the right direction for new build home buyers and with the new homes ombudsman in place should help protect consumers.

What I would say is there is a cost to having the pre-completion checklist carried out and my advice to all new homebuyers would be to wait and have a thorough professional snagging inspection carried out after legal completion by a qualified snagging company. You can carry out a full visual check of your new home during your demonstration and again at legal completion.

That way you are ensuring your new home has been thoroughly snagged and any breaches in building regulations or warranty providers standards are documented for your builder to rectify. 

I hope this episode has been helpful don’t forget. If you have any comment or would like to ask a question you can drop me an email to Socials@livelyprofessionalservices.co.uk and I  will do my best to answer your questions.     

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So  Until next time thank you for joining me today and I look forward to speaking to you soon.