MPs warn the rush to build 1.5 million homes risks embedding quality failures at scale
The HCLG Committee has warned that pressure to deliver homes at pace may compromise build quality, and called for mandatory ombudsman coverage across all developers.
The UK Housing, Communities and Local Government (HCLG) Committee published its findings on new build home quality on 22 May 2026, warning the government that its target to deliver 1.5 million homes this parliament could come at the cost of build standards. The report, directed at Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook MP, calls for a statutory ombudsman covering all developers, and cites persistent evidence of widespread defects in new build homes.
What happened
On 22 May 2026, the HCLG Committee published recommendations covering three areas: improving the quality of new homes, strengthening routes to redress for buyers, and increasing the supply of accessible homes.
On quality, the committee drew on evidence from the Home Builders Federation's National Customer Satisfaction Survey, which found that 93.7% of new-build purchasers reported defects or snags to their developer after moving in, with over 26% reporting more than 15 problems. Evidence submitted to the committee described recurring issues including major structural defects, faulty fire safety equipment, and problems with damp and mould linked to poor storage of building materials and inadequate ventilation design.
Committee chair Florence Eshalomi MP said: "There is mounting pressure on the industry to build new homes at pace and that this may compromise standards," noting that previous housebuilding expansions in the UK had coincided with falls in customer satisfaction with new build quality.
On redress, the committee called on the government to ensure that a statutory new homes ombudsman is operational by the end of 2028/29, with all developers signed up. Currently, around 35–40% of the new homes market sits outside the remit of the New Homes Ombudsman Service (NHOS). The committee also flagged overheating risk as an under-addressed issue in new build homes, recommending a stress-test of building regulations as part of the government's planned technical review.
Why it matters for developers
The report is a political signal with practical consequences. If the government moves to make NHOS membership mandatory (as the committee recommends), every developer currently operating outside the code would face new obligations on pre-completion inspections, after-sales service standards, complaint timescales, and the evidence required to defend against an ombudsman referral.
Even for developers already registered with the NHQB, the committee's findings reinforce what the NHQC, the Shared Ownership Code, and the Building Safety Act already require: a defensible, documented evidence trail covering what was handed over, when, and in what condition. The 93.7% defect rate cited by MPs is drawn from the industry's own data. Disputes that reach the NHOS are increasingly turning on the quality of that documentation, not the facts in dispute.
The committee's specific mention of faulty fire safety equipment and damp-and-mould defects also places post-completion inspection and defect-tracking processes squarely in scope. Both categories can escalate beyond customer service issues into regulatory territory under the Building Safety Act and Awaab's Law.
What to watch
Government responses to select committee reports are typically due within 60 days, putting a formal reply in mid-to-late July 2026. Watch for whether the government commits to a timeline on mandatory ombudsman registration, and whether the building regulations technical review explicitly addresses overheating in new build residential. Any consultation on expanding NHOS scope would trigger significant operational changes for developers not yet registered, including new requirements for inspection records, aftercare documentation, and complaint-handling processes that meet the code.
How Guided Home helps
As regulatory pressure on post-completion quality governance increases, the ability to demonstrate what was inspected, documented and resolved at plot level becomes the baseline expectation — not the exception.
Guided Home's Inspections and Defects module gives site managers and customer care teams a shared, timestamped record of every snag raised and resolved, structured to the evidence standard the NHOS and NHQC expect. The Document Assurance engine validates that completion documentation is present and compliant before handover, while Document Intelligence auto-classifies and maps incoming documents to the correct plot — turning what was a manual filing exercise into an organised compliance archive.
For directors accountable to boards and regulators, the Executive Dashboard provides the portfolio-level view of quality, completeness and outstanding risk that the Committee's report implicitly expects operators to have.
Sources
- Mortgage Solutions — "Speedy delivery of new homes should not compromise quality, govt warned" (22 May 2026)
- Specification Online — "Government needs to do more to ensure new build homes are of good quality, say MPs" (22 May 2026)
- PBC Today — "Government must do more to ensure new build homes are good quality, Housing Committee says"
- Inside Housing — "MPs say government must do more on new build home quality"
- Housing Today — "Pressure from government to build at pace may compromise quality, warn MPs"