Company finds nearly £250m of additional work including fire safety and concrete frame repairs
Barratt Redrow has said that it will continue to look to recover money from its supply chain after funding a further £248m in costs for fire safety and concrete frame repairs.
In a trading update this morning, the housebuilder said it had been hit with further liabilities which included having to spend £80m on fire safety issues at a four-building development completed by its Southern region in 2002.
It has also been hit by £18m of additional costs “relating to a number of newly identified issues at a large development in London” which it said included ”both fire safety and reinforced concrete frame design remediation costs”.
It also said it was going to carry out remediation works on concrete frames at five Redrow developments – which it had flagged at its half year results in the spring – which would cost £150m.
The firm added: “We continue to actively seek to recover costs from third parties in respect of issues around fire safety and reinforced concrete frames.
“[In May], the group won a landmark Supreme Court case which clarified the responsibility of companies in the supply chain for remediating defects in developments they were involved in. This ruling made it clear that all parts of the industry need to take responsibility and that developers shouldn’t be penalised for proactively taking action to support leaseholders and residents in advance of litigation.”
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Elsewhere, it said that restructuring costs following the Redrow acquisition last year will be £90m but had already made £69m in cost savings and added it was “well on the way to achieving our previously upgraded cost synergy target of at least £100m”.
The number of homes it completed during the year to 29 June was 16,565, an 8% fall from the aggregated comparable of 17,972 in the prior year, while net reservation rates were running at 0.64 a week.
It said that home completions for FY26 would be in a range of 17,200 to 17,800, including around 600 completions from its joint ventures. Net cash at the year-end was £772m, which the firm said was ahead of expectations, and forward sales of £2.9bn, covering 9,835 homes.
The firm will release its annual results on 17 September.
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