Taylor Wimpey sets aside £125m to improve building safety

Taylor Wimpey, one of the UK’s biggest housebuilders, has set aside £125m to fund the replacement of cladding and other fire safety work on its developments in response to a national building safety crisis.

The FTSE 100 company said it had created the fund “in order to provide certainty for customers and leaseholders and to avoid them bearing the cost of investment to ensure their buildings are safe.”

Thousands of developments in the UK have been caught up in a growing cladding crisis, after a tragic fire at Grenfell tower in west London in 2017 exposed concerns about the common materials used to insulate and cover the exterior of apartment blocks.

Ministers set aside £3.5bn in funding to help repair the worst affected buildings last month, adding to £1.6bn already pledged. But campaign groups and the Labour party have said the funding does not go far enough.

Taylor Wimpey said its fund would cover any block built in the past 20 years, including those below 18 metres tall, which are not eligible for government grants.

The company revealed the damage done by the coronavirus pandemic on Tuesday, when it announced its financial results for 2020. Taylor Wimpey’s revenues fell 36 per cent from 2019 to £2.79bn, while pre-tax profits slumped 68 per cent to £264m.

But the company said it was confident in the medium-term strength of the housing market, restoring its dividend and actively buying land. Taylor Wimpey and other builders have been buoyed by government support for the housing sector, and the company has a record number of orders for new homes.