CIOB welcomes appointment of first chair for New Homes Quality Board
The CIOB has welcomed the appointment of Natalie Elphicke OBE MP as the interim head of the recently established New Homes Ombudsman.
The Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) has welcomed the appointment of Natalie Elphicke OBE MP as the interim chair of the interim New Homes Quality Board. Ms. Elphicke, the Member of Parliament for Dover and Deal, was named ‘new homes quality champion’ by the government last year, and is a founding director of the Housing and Finance Institute.
Other members of the 12-strong new interim board include representatives from small, medium and large builders, UK Finance, Citizens Advice and the National House-Building Council (NHBC).
The creation of a ‘New Homes Ombudsman’ service, which will oversee compensation claims for people who experience poor quality work in new builds, was announced in October 2019. It will have legal authority to exclude rogue developers from building and it will have the power to compel remedies for inadequate building work.
CIOB supported the creation of a new body to provide a voice for consumers and improve the reputation of the construction industry in evidence submitted to the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Excellence in the Built Environment. In its evidence, CIOB called for any future ombudsman to be independent, to be able to set timescales for housebuilders to deal with property defects and to direct housebuilders or developers to take remedial action – correcting previous remedial work, if necessary.
Caroline Gumble, Chief Executive of the CIOB, said:
“We welcome the announcement of the Interim New Homes Quality Board to help develop what the new arbitration service for complaints about poor quality building work on new build properties will look like. Quality remains one of the biggest issues facing the construction industry today. As one of the organisations that pushed for its creation in our submissions to the APPG for Excellence in the Built Environment, we still see the New Homes Ombudsman as a fundamental mechanism for pushing the construction industry to strive for better, whilst offering greater certainty to those publishing new homes.