6th November 2008

This web page is devoted to a single George Wimpey-built house, which was bought off-plan in 2004. Buying off-plan is a matter of trust. It is reasonable to expect the house will be built to professional standards with a reasonable degree of uniformity of build between different houses. When purchasing the property, we paid over £20,000 for 'extras' in the hope of avoiding unnecessary hassle once we had moved in.

One would expect two fundamental requirements to be met on completion of purchase: that the house looks OK from the front (at least) and that the house is watertight.

Professional standards are about effective project management with the site management taking quality control seriously. It may be expedient to give tradesmen short timescales and a free reign, but, finally, correcting poor workmanship can be expensive, unless effort is put into delaying or avoiding correction of the inevitable faults.

When one buys a new home, numerous minor problems are to be expected. Such 'snags' are dealt with by the builder once the buyer moves in. It is the responsibility of the homeowner to identify problems and to provide the builder with a snagging list so that corrective work can be carried out. Unfortunately, some 'snags' can be so basic to the construction of the house that they cannot be remedied easily and any repair may look worse than the original fault.

It is also essential that site management does not avoid householders and does not leave sales representatives to act as the only accessible site representatives.

The procedure of having snags corrected can take years, with workmen not turning up at agreed times, or turning up totally without warning, or never turning up at all. Often discussions with management about faults degenerate into something that is a cross between a theatrical farce and a pantomime, with comments from management like 'I don't see it' and 'It's an optical illusion'. Sometimes work can be 'corrected' many times and faults inspected over and over again. The impression is that there is an intention to wear down the resolve of the complainant.

As a pensioner, I have lived in many houses including new builds. This house has proved to be a unique experience for me, although it would be unfair to think that Wimpey is in any way unique. It seems that current building standards are a sign of the times with many builders producing products of an even lower quality. Before purchasing this property, we had thought Wimpey to be one of the better large builders, but there are always variations between sites and even houses on the same site. Others share our experiences (1, 2, 3 and many more).

owner@AGeorgeWimpeyHome.co.uk