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Taylor Wimpey sets aside £125m to fund fire safety work
One of the largest house builders in the UK has set aside £125m to fund the replacement of cladding and other building safety work on apartment blocks constructed by the firm over the past 20 years.
Taylor Wimpey has identified 232 apartment buildings that may need fire safety works in order to meet the safety standards currently being imposed by lenders via the EWS1 form.
The house builder has committed to funding and overseeing the improvement of all apartment buildings it owns, regardless of the building’s height or whether it is eligible for funding via the government’s Building Safety Fund.
For buildings that Taylor Wimpey no longer owns, the firm said it will contribute funding to assist freeholders in bringing them up to standard, as long the building is not eligible for government funding and the freeholder produces “a fair and proportionate plan for fire safety improvement works following EWS1 assessment”.
Taylor Wimpey announced the £125m fund in its financial results for 2020, in which it reported a profit of £217m, down 67.8% from £673.8m in 2019. The £125m for building safety work will be booked in the house builder’s 2021 accounts as an exceptional charge.
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Commenting on the £125m fund, Pete Redfern, chief executive at Taylor Wimpey, said the money had been set aside “in order to provide certainty for customers and leaseholders and to avoid them bearing the cost of investment to ensure their buildings are safe”.
It follows similar moves from two other large house builders, Barratt and Persimmon, who recently set aside £56m and £75m for remediation works respectively.
Last month, the government announced the introduction of a new levy which will be charged to developers seeking permission to build high-rise blocks in the future, alongside a tax on the residential property sector, which is expected to raise £2bn between 2022-32.
Taylor Wimpey’s results also revealed the impact of the pandemic on the house builder with completions dropping by 39% in 2020 compared to 2019.
Mr Redfern said the firm was “confident in the medium-term performance of the housing market”, leading it to accelerate its land purchases from May 2020.
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