Including exceptional items of £146m largely caused by the cost of refinancing its £645m debt facilities, the group recorded a pre-tax loss of £71.3m.

Pete Redfern, group chief executive said the house builder, which is in the throes of selling its North American arm, was well on the road to recovery in spite of an uncertain market in the UK.

He vowed Taylor Woodrow would never return to pushing house building volumes at the expense of margin.

Redfern said UK operating margins were up to 7.1% and predicted a return to double digit margins next year.

“We do not intend to return to a volume-driven strategy when market conditions improve,” he said.

“Our strategy will remain focused on margin ahead of volume and we will deliver volumes in a particular year on the basis of the land that we have available with optimised consents, rather than rushing land through the planning process in order to ‘feed the machine’.”

Revenue from UK housing rose 2% to £1.7bn, with a higher average selling price outweighing the impact of a slight reduction in the number of home completions, down 2% at 9,962.

Overall group turnover remained flat at £2.6bn.

He added: “We have continued to improve the quality of our landbank and add value to our existing sites through replans and operational efficiency.

We now have the financing in place to enable us to continue that progress towards our aim of achieving double digit margins in 2012.”