Jenrick demands immediate action from Persimmon

Robert Jenrick has urged Persimmon to take immediate action following an independent report published yesterday which found the housebuilder guilty of a “systemic,  nationwide” failure to install critical fire-safety materials.

The report, by Stephanie Barwise QC, found that a lack of processes to ensure build quality and staff supervision, training and assessment were responsible for the failure by Britain’s second-largest builder to install vital cavity barriers in new timber-frame homes.

The housing secretary’s comments come amid sharp criticism of the builder, including from former Riba president Ben Derbyshire, who told Housing Today the report, which said that Persimmon’s board needed to change the whole purpose of the company, represented a “staggering litany of failure”.

Jenrick said in a statement: “Persimmon has published an independent review of its business and they will want to take immediate action to address the concerns raised.”

He added that the government had announced plans to create a housing ombudsman “to ensure that buyers have a means of redress”. When asked whether Persimmon should continue to receive government support, such as from the Help to Buy programme, despite such significant failings, the minister declined to comment.

However, a spokesperson said the government would ensure that in the future round of Help to Buy, from 2021, “developers who work with us meet the standards and quality that customers expect and deserve”.

Persimmon has benefited from hundreds of millions of pounds of government support over the past five years under the Help to Buy scheme, which underpins nearly 50% of the housebuilder’s sales.

Persimmon said yesterday that it had carried out checks on 16,000 Persimmon properties since the problems with cavity barrier installation emerged in 2018, and had appointed Arup as a consultant to advise on fire safety. It also said that it wasbringing in new corporate processes to ensure build quality.

Former Riba president Ben Derbyshire, also chair of architect practice HTA, said Persimmon should be commended for its courage in commissioning and publishing the  review, but that the findings represented an indictment of the business. He also questioned whether the response was adequate.

“It is such a dramatic and staggering litany of past failures, one wonders whether the response is enough,” he said. In particular, he was shocked by the “self-confessed omission of many fundamental aspects of normal business practice”, such as quality-control processes, supervision, staff training, and staff performance reviews.

The report has sparked debate about the extent to which Persimmon’s apparent failure on safety-critical construction issues is symptomatic of a cultural problem in the  housebuilding industry.

David Birkbeck, chief executive of housebuilding adviser Design for Homes said that Persimmon, which last year reported an industry record profit of over £1bn, was “an outlier” that was “damaging the reputation of the whole housebuilding industry”.

However, an investigation this year by the BBC’s Watchdog programme found that both Persimmon and Bellway had been guilty of building homes with faulty or missing cavity barriers, while the London Fire Brigade investigation into a fire at a Berkeley Homes block of flats in Worcester Park last summer pointed the finger at missing or incorrect cavity barriers.

Market analyst Neal Hudson, of Residential Analysts, described the review as ”brutal”, with implications for all major housebuilders. He said: “[This] raises a big question about the current model of housebuilding, as one of the main conclusions [is that] Persimmon has traditionally been more a land assembler and house-seller rather than a housebuilder. That could apply to more than just Persimmon.”

Hudson added: “[The] big question is whether we need to change the whole housebuilding model if we want to see genuine change.”