Our Meeting with Taylor Wimpey – May 2024
After recently attending Taylor Wimpey’s 2024 AGM, we arranged a follow-up meeting on 29th May to discuss the company’s building safety remediation programme in more depth.
We met with Ben Emmonds, Director of Cladding Remediation, and JohnJoe McGuigan, Senior Technical Project Manager. Four EOCS campaigners joined the meeting, including two leaseholders from Taylor Wimpey buildings in Runcorn and Bromley, which helped to illustrate some of the broader issues with specific practical examples.
We discussed a wide range of topics which you can read about in our full report. In summary,
• The most recent data showed Taylor Wimpey had completed works on more buildings than other developers – but there is a high “failure rate” on assessments and the pace of assessments and project starts on site are slow.
• Taylor Wimpey is actively following up with building owners where copies of existing assessments are outstanding or to agree arrangements for any further building assessments that may be necessary.
• There have been many cases of long delays to works starting, which do not appear to meet the commitment to meet the original timelines for buildings that have transferred from the Building Safety Fund process.
• Taylor Wimpey asserted that longer timelines for building control approval under the new Building Safety Regulator are now affecting the start date for works in some cases.
• So far, there has only been one development where a dispute over the scope of works has required a more formal dispute resolution process, in which DLUHC was engaged as a mediator between the parties.
• In Taylor Wimpey’s view, soaring insurance premiums are driven by the insurance industry’s approach to risk, and the developer will not consider contributing to incremental costs in any circumstances.
• If leaseholders believe they have a case for recovering the cost of “relevant steps” to reduce or mitigate fire risk, such as waking watch or alarms, then they should apply to the First-tier Tribunal.
• Where properties continue to be unmortgageable, leaseholders should contact Taylor Wimpey with specific details, as they may be able to unblock lending decisions with certain lenders.
• Remediation is not being considered on under 11 metre buildings due to being “out of scope” of the developer contract, but the developer will engage with DLUHC if approached on a case-by-case basis.
• Taylor Wimpey wants to improve quality and regularity of communications, and anyone having difficultly receiving communication via their managing agent should email the developer directly.
Read the full report on our meeting with Taylor Wimpey here
CALL TO ACTION!
Are you a leaseholder or resident in a Taylor Wimpey building, having issues in relation to assessment or remediation – and unable to get a satisfactory response via your managing agent? Please email the developer directly at [email protected] and copy us at [email protected] if you would like us to be aware of the issues being raised and to follow up if needed.
If you need to escalate your concerns to DLUHC, please email [email protected], providing the name and address of your building together with a short summary of your concerns, and detailing the attempts you have made to contact the developer. Please copy our team at [email protected] so that we can follow up where necessary.
Image by Sebbi Strauch from Pixabay
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