Sales at McCarthy & Stone have been hit in recent weeks by the second wave of covid infections and the national lockdown, the firm admitted today.

The listed retirement housebuilder, which is in the middle of being bought by US private equity giant Lone Star, said in a trading update for the year to the end of October that completions had slumped to just a third of their 2019 level. Current trading was “increasingly” being affected by “rising covid-19 infection rates and government lockdown measures”.

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