You are viewing 1 of your 1 free articles
The UK’s largest house builder has now spent £163m fixing cladding and structural issues within buildings it has previously built since the Grenfell Tower fire.
In an update to the stock market this morning, Barratt Developments said it has incurred charges of £163.1m to date in relation to issues with its legacy properties, of which £85.6m remains to be spent.
The house builder added: “While the charges reflect the current best estimate of the extent and future costs of work required, as assessments and work progresses or if government legislation and regulation further evolves, estimates will be updated.”
The bill includes a £31m spend since the start of this year on Citiscape, a block in Croydon that was built by Barratt in 2002 and had the same aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding as Grenfell Tower.
In September 2019, residents were evacuated from the building after “unrelated structural issues” were discovered while work to replace the cladding was underway.
Following the discovery, Barratt undertook a review of 26 other similar developments, which it said is now complete.
The builder said in the update that all of its buildings were compliant with building regulations at the time of construction.
It added: “Now, alongside evolving government advice on fire safety for multi-storey buildings, we are working with building owners, management companies and expert engineers on assessments of buildings we have constructed and the solutions needed to support leaseholders and residents.”
Yesterday Inside Housing revealed that the UK’s largest house builders, including Barratt, have collectively put aside £500m for building safety remediation.
Earlier this year, the government announced plans to introduce a new levy on developers to help reap the costs of cladding removal work across the country. Barratt has said it is supportive of such a levy.
In its quarterly update, Barratt also said it had built 4,481 homes in the first four months of this year, compared with 3,504 in the same period in 2020 and 4,239 in the same period in 2019.
Meanwhile, forward sales as at 2 May were 14,846, compared with 12,205 in 2020 and 14,181 in 2019.
David Thomas, chief executive of Barratt, said: “We have seen strong demand for our high-quality, energy-efficient homes on well-designed developments, which means we now expect to increase wholly owned completions to between 16,000 and 16,250 homes this year, along with around 650 JV [joint venture] home completions.
“As construction activity has increased, our employees and sub-contractors have worked hard to maintain our high standards of quality and service, and we are proud that for the 12th successive year our customers have rated us as a five-star house builder.”
Already have an account? Click here to manage your newsletters