(Bloomberg) --
Persimmon Plc has been urged to change its corporate culture by an independent review following complaints about the quality of homes the company builds.
The board of the U.K.'s largest housebuilder by market value commissioned an independent review of the firm in April to assess the effectiveness of measures designed to improve customer care and crack down on poor workmanship.
“Persimmon's culture must change,” concluded the report, led by lawyer Stephanie Barwise. “In a changing regulatory environment, Persimmon cannot afford the stigma of a corporate culture which results in poor workmanship and a potentially unsafe product.”
A television documentary in July highlighted a series of problems at the firm including construction faults and high-pressure sales tactics. U.K. broadcaster Channel 4 brought in an independent building surveyor to assess a recently sold Persimmon house and found almost 300 faults.
The firm has been a major beneficiary of the government's Help to Buy loan program for new home buyers, which has been a boon for U.K. developers. The government was weighing whether to ban Persimmon from selling its homes to buyers using the interest-free loans, the Times reported earlier this year.
“Persimmon has already taken positive steps in other important areas,” the firm's chairman Roger Devlin said in a statement. Measures include a plan where buyers can retain 1.5% of the purchase price of the home until all faults are fixed, as well as a construction working group to focus on build quality.
To contact the reporter on this story: Lucca de Paoli in London at gdepaoli1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Shelley Robinson at ssmith118@bloomberg.net, Chris Bourke, Patrick Henry
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