Battered housebuilder Persimmon bids to repair image with cash pledge

Persimmon made a bid to rebuild its battered reputation on Thursday by giving customers the chance to keep part of their cash for new homes until faults are fixed.

The housebuilder has had a turbulent time amid rows over corporate pay and complaints over the quality of its homes, leading to speculation that it could even be kicked out of the Government’s Help to Buy subsidy scheme which has boosted industry profits.

Under plans announced today, from July homebuyers’ solicitors will keep 6% of the build cost of every new home — equivalent to an average of £3600 per property — until any faults identified are fixed.

Persimmon sold 16,500 homes last year, so the “homebuyer’s retention” initiative could cost company cashflow up to £60 million a year.

The efforts to rebuild its brand come amid widespread criticism of its build quality and weeks after it made £1 billion in profits for the first time.

Of nearly 750 reviews on the TrustPilot website only 36% rated the firm as “excellent”, and 58% rated their homes “poor” or “bad”. Reviews in the past week range from “Do not buy Persimmon” to another customer waiting 15 months for snagging works to be completed, saying “the whole build screams of shoddy materials and shoddy work”.

Persimmon’s new chief executive Dave Jenkinson said: “We need to continue to raise our game in customer care… We are determined that the experience is not overshadowed by teething problems and providing a homebuyer’s retention is an important step towards achieving this.” Chairman Roger Devlin added that the move was a “clear and unambiguous signal of cultural and operational change”.

One industry insider pointed out that the construction industry was moving away from adversarial retention payments, but said of Persimmon: “They’ve been under massive pressure from Government about their quality and reputation. The new chairman is driving big changes and the new chief executive has been tasked with delivering improvements — there was also a commitment in their last statement to drive improvements in their customer satisfaction survey scores — so it’s very welcome all round.”

Previous chief executive Jeff Fairburn left last year with a bonus totalling £84.9 million over two years and Jenkinson also scooped more than £45 million under the controversial scheme.