On Mon, 19 Apr 2004 09:17:23 +0100, "IMM" wrote:



Andy, you have it wrong. The government should regulate even more.

Nonsense. There is seldom a justification for increased regulation
and legislation and this is certainly not one of them.

The
quality of the crap dished up by construction companies is dire. More
pre-checks, and bigger fines for obvious not nailing down roofs and the
likes, should be done.

The problem is where does one draw the line? To check on every
detail would require a huge army of inspectors and administrators.
This isn't wealth creating, and too large a proportion of the
workforce is in administrative work as it is.


Checks for quality not just structural soundness,
should undertaken, not re-active suing, as only parasite lawyers make money
then.

I'm not in favour of parasite lawyers making money, but if heavy fines
and compensation were awarded against errant construction companies
then they would take notice and control their activities rather
better.

The best way is to prevent the poor quality in the first place.

I don't disagree with that, but it should be the responsibility of the
construction company. It is with every other product that the
consumer buys.

Since a lot of problems with a house don't appear for a period of
time, then a proper guarantee covering most aspects of the house
should be required and implemented properly, not the weak NHBC thing
that we have today.

Perhaps there should be an escrow system for the last X% of the
purchase money of a new property. In other words the purchaser pays
most of the money to the developer in the usual way but X% goes into a
separate account, not under either party's control for a period of say
a year. At the end of the year, the purchaser signs a release for
the money if all is satisfactory and the developer receives this plus
any interest. Having the money outside the direct control of either
party makes sure that it is available as long as the contract
conditions have been met.



The
UK has an international reputation of being cowboys. Lat year the big house
builders made record profits with the lowest number of homes built since the
1920s. In the 1920s the population was only in the 40 millions too, making
this even worse when the big picture is fully viewed.

That's a separate issue. There's nothing wrong with making profits.

Numbers of houses built is a separate issue to their quality, except
in that large building rates exacerbate the skills shortage which
hardly helps quality either.

The real problems are threefold:

- Customers wanting things on the cheap

- Customers not complaining when things are wrong

- Lack of encouragement and incentive for young people to go into the
construction industry because the idiot in No. 10 wants them to go to
"universities".




Do you have anything meaningful to say on the
subject,

See above and no doubt you were astounded.

I was.


or are you going to continue with the same diversionary
tactics as ((jag++)++) and his cronies?

Prescott should dish out a few left hooks, that is clear. The ST Rich list
still puts parasite landowners and large construction company owners as the
richest people in the UK.

Nothing wrong with that.

Foreign billionaires using London as a sort of
base, with pet footy teams too, don't count as UK billionaires.

or that.



..andy

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