The UK’s biggest housebuilder, Barratt, reported costs of £412m to deal with “legacy property costs associated with building safety-related remediation activities” that reduced its pre-tax profit by 20.9%. The amount set aside by the company has doubled from that originally announced when Barratt signed up to the pledge in April.
The company also set the timeline to complete the outstanding remediation and repair work at three-to-five years but admitted it did not know how much more it will be liable for in terms of fire safety or general building safety costs in the future.
fire safety costs
The story was similar for Redrow, where, despite showing revenue growth and improving underlying profit, fire safety costs of £164m led to a reduction in overall profit to £246m, down from last year’s £314m.
MJ Gleeson’s financial reporting showed £12.9m has been provided to cover the cost of fixing life-critical fire safety issues on those buildings covered by the pledge. These costs led to pre-tax profit for Gleeson’s showing only a small increase to £42.6m, up just £0.9m from 2021.
With over 50 companies signed up to the government pledge, the full and final costs to them of remediating legacy fire-safety risks in the UK’s tall buildings are far from being known.
