This morning the hosue builder said its legacy property costs for the year to June 2021 had risen by £30m, comprising both the cladding and Citiscape and associated reviews.
In a trading update for the year-end, the firm said: “While the charges in respect of cladding and external wall systems reflect our current best estimate of the extent and future costs of work required, as assessments and work progresses or if Government legislation and regulation further evolves, estimates may have to be updated.”
A year ago the house builder revealed its had uncovered structural design defects within multi-storey concrete frames built over 10 years ago.
The alert was first raised when defective ACM cladding was removed following the Grenfell disaster at one major scheme in Croydon.
The frame of the Citiscape residential high-rise in the town centre had suffered large structural cracks prompting the immediate evacuation of residents from the first two floors. Problems with other buildings were later assessed to be much less severe.
Over the year total home completions returned to 17,243, just 3.4% below annual pre-pandemic completions in 2019.
Reflecting strong reservation rates, Barratt said it was substantially more forward sold for the year ahead than at the same point before the pandemic hit.
David Thomas, Chief Executive, said: “We are therefore well positioned for FY22, with the high level of forward sales providing us with increased visibility for our build programmes and a strong platform for the year ahead.
“The continued commitment of our site teams and sub-contractors has delivered an excellent rebuild in our construction activity ahead of planned output, with an average of 311 equivalent homes built per week in the year.”
Barratt said build cost inflatiion had doubled to 4% due to the continued strength of the market and constraints in parts of our supply chain.
Thomas added: “We have seen continued strong demand for our high quality, energy efficient homes on well-designed developments, enabling us to deliver 17,243 home completions this year.
“While these are still uncertain times, we enter the new financial year in a strong position and remain focussed on our medium term targets, including delivering 20,000 homes a year.”
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