Barratt has said it expects to report a 9% increase in pre-tax profit when it announces its financial results for the year to the end of June 2019.

The housebuilder said pre-tax profit would be in the region of £910m, while operating margin had risen to 18.9%, up by 1.2 percentage points, with underlying margin improvement of roughly 70 basis points, driven mainly by margin initiatives.

Margin improvements were driven through sites being purchased at higher gross margins and new products feeding through, plus the sale of a legacy commercial asset and the reversal of inventory impairment provisions, resulting in a further 50 basis points of operating margin.