The NHBC
The National House Building Council is a private insurance company, 100% funded by the various member builders! The NHBC functions as a government approved, self-regulatory body for the house building industry in the UK. They provide inspections at key stages of the build, however the purpose of these various inspections is to risk assess and protect their own investment, it should not be regarded as a Quality Check for the house buyer!
In essence the NHBC Buildmark Warranty is a time limited insurance certificate. It should provide comprehensive cover should any latent defects occur within the first 2 years of occupation. The remaining 8 years only covers major structural issues.
In the NHBC's 2004 Annual Review they admit that they only have 330 Inspectors UK wide! Yet they go on to claim that they carried out almost 1 Million individual inspections on the 180,000 New Homes built last year. Simple arithmetic would tell you that on average each inspector would need to have carried out 3030 inspections in 2004. Assuming each inspector works 7 days a week with no holidays, no days off, no sickness and no office time or training days they would still need to be doing 8.6 Inspections every day of their lives. Is that possible? How long must they be spending on each individual inspection?
Using this factual data it's easy to see why the faults that we spot on a regular basis slip through the NHBC checklists! The Chairman of the NHBC was also proud to announce in the same review that they only had to pay out £29.3 Million last year to repair faults in new homes! Unfortunately it was an increase of £4 Million on the total figure for year before! Why is it getting worse? The NHBC 2004 Annual Review also said that: "NHBC Inspectors identified more than 600,000 defects on site, many of which could have led to serious problems at a later stage"! Is that supposed to reassure new home buyers?
To see the report in PDF format click here. If you can see through the spin, it makes interesting reading!
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