Following the appointment of the New Homes Ombudsman, the New Homes Quality Code is due to be published later this month. But will smaller house builders be able to comply with it?
Last month, the New Homes Quality Board announced that dispute resolution specialist The Dispute Service had been appointed as the New Homes Ombudsman.
This means that, in accordance with the house building industry's new code of practice, the New Homes Quality Code, the Dispute Service will now be responsible for developing the New Homes Ombudsman Service, which will help improve the quality of new build homes and the standard of customer service delivered by house builders.
Coming into force in the new year, the New Homes Ombudsman Service will increase the accountability of house builders and improve customer service standards by enabling buyers of new builds to register complaints about their properties and/or the developers' handling of their concerns with the New Homes Ombudsman, who will then review their case and determine if the New Homes Quality Code has been breached.
As well as improving the quality of new builds, the new Code will also raise the bar in respect of the way in which home builders must handle complaints from customers going forward.
With the new Code not expected to be officially announced until later this month, the exact wording of it remains unknown but early indications suggest that small and medium-sized home builders will struggle to comply with the new rules as the anticipated upsurge in customer queries are likely to result in customer service teams struggling to deal with the increase in demand. This, in turn, could easily result in reputational damage for the home builders in question. So what can they do?
Fortunately, services are available to help businesses overcome any issues caused by the new Code.
At Consult44, we have more than 50 years' experience in the house building industry and are experts at helping customer service teams of all sizes resolve problems, either by advising on reported issues versus technical standards/tolerances, or by carrying out site inspections and providing professional reports based on our findings. We also offer full training that will bring your staff up to speed with the new processes that are likely to be included in the Code.
If you think your company could benefit from our expertise, you can find out more about our specialist developer support services here.