Announcing improved annual results this morning, chief executive Greg Fitzgerald said a combination of loss of planned units and extra costs in building extra staircases had already impacted the business last year.

Despite this, Fitzgerald said that Vistry has made strong progress on shifting towards becoming the country’s leading partnership business with sector-leading improvement in turnover and profits.

This transition saw Vistry simplify its structure, reducing regional businesses from 32 to 26 while incurring restructuring costs of nearly £30m last year from redundancies.

Despite this, revenue jumped 29% to £3.6bn, generating a 23% upswing in profit to £305m last year.

Fitzgerald said: “The resilience of our Partnerships model was clearly demonstrated in 2023.

“The group delivered a total of 16,118 new homes, down only 5.4% on prior year proforma, outperforming the wider peer group.”

He said that the transition to a fully partnerships business has made significant progress.  Around 67% (10,722) of the total homes delivered were partner funded with open market sales at 33% (5,396).

Fitzgerald added that the firm was now stepping up use of timber-frame housing as a key part of its operational and sustainability strategy.

Vistry reopened its East Midlands timber frame manufacturing plant following the completion of the recent strategic review.

Combined with its factories in Warrington and Leicester, Vistry now has capacity to deliver 8,000 units from its operations.

This year it aims to deliver over 4,000 units, up from 2,400 in 2023.

He said: “We are manufacturing open panel and hybrid panel timber frames for Vistry business units across the country and our product includes standard house types for our affordable housing range and all three of our brands: Bovis Homes, Linden Homes and Countryside Homes.

“We have also introduced roof trusses and floor cassettes to our production lines, with full integration of production of this line being effective from H2 2024 onwards.”

Fitzgerald said Vistry was now on track to deliver strong growth in completions this year, targeting it excess of 17,500 units.

“We have seen a notable pick‐up in demand from PRS providers in recent months, and the easing of mortgage rates at the start of the year has had a positive impact on open market demand.

“We are optimistic that this trend will continue during 2024.”