£7m bill for firm that sold shoddy new-build homes
ONE of Britain’s biggest housebuilders yesterday set aside £7million to compensate furious buyers and fix hastily finished homes.
Bovis Homes has received complaints about everything from incomplete driveways to leaky pipes, shoddy walls, dodgy wiring and badly painted rooms.
The problems mounted at the end of last year when Bovis offered cus- tomers £3,000 to move into unfinished homes before Christmas in a desperate bid to hit ambitious sales targets. Others saw their moving-in date pushed back because Bovis was unable to complete building work on time – forcing some to renegotiate mortgages with their banks.
More than 1,400 people have now joined a Facebook page called the Bovis Homes Victims Group to air complaints.
Irate customers are also planning a protest at the company’s annual meeting in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in May.
Bovis, which sold 3,977 new homes last year, has said £7million has been put aside to ‘cover the cost of the required remedial work and appropriate compensation for affected customers’. The money will mostly be spent on fixing the problems.
Earl Sibley, who became stand- in boss after David Ritchie quit abruptly last month, admitted that ‘ the recent experiences of a number of customers fell below the high standards they rightly expected’. The scandal saw Mr Ritchie quit as chief executive after eight years in charge.
Mr Sibley said: ‘I have been out and met a number of our less happy customers, sat on their sofas and apologised for what they have been through.
‘We have started changing things but it will take some time.We appreciate that buying a home is one of the most significant decisions that people make in their lives and we want anyone who buys a Bovis Home to be delighted with it.’
Mr Sibley, the firm’s former finance director, said: ‘Customer service standards fell significantly during 2016 and homes were completed, in particular at the year end, which fell materially short of the high standard expected.’
The trouble has inflicted damage on the group’s finances and has left shareholders nursing heavy losses.
Bovis revealed yesterday that its profits fell 3 per cent last year to £ 154.7million – well below its expectations of up to £170million.
Its shares fell 10 per cent, down 86p to 755p, wiping £115million off the firm’s value.
The construction group said it would build 10 to 15 per cent fewer homes this year than last year to ‘reset the business’.
Tory MP Oliver Colvile, chairman of an all-party parliamentary group on new builds, said developments are often ‘not very good’. He added: ‘There is a genuine need for more housing but we need to ensure they are going to be good quality houses rather than the sometimes frankly rubbish.’
‘Below standards they expected’