How an inspection works
From the first email to the point where the developer signs items off. No part of this is proprietary — if you would rather do it yourself, the method below is the method.
Before the day
- You send the postcode, plot number and your target completion date. We confirm availability and a fixed fee the same working day.
- You tell the developer an independent inspector is attending. You do not need their permission for a post-completion visit; for pre-completion, the New Homes Quality Code covers it where the site is registered.
- If the site refuses access — it happens — we send you the wording that usually resolves it, and we attend anyway on the rearranged date at no extra fee.
On the day
Three to five hours, depending on size. Roughly in this order:
- External envelope — brickwork and pointing, render, flashings, rainwater goods, external levels, drainage gullies, and the roof from ground level and from a pole camera
- Loft — insulation depth and coverage, ventilation paths, any services terminating where they should not
- Room by room — walls and ceilings against plastering tolerances, doors and windows cycled, ironmongery, sockets and switches, floor levels
- Services — every tap run, every waste checked for fall, heating on and each radiator checked for circulation, extractor fans tested for actual extraction rather than just noise
- Instruments — moisture meter on all external walls and around wet areas, thermal camera on the envelope to find missing insulation and cold bridging
C1 items do not wait for the report. Anything unsafe or actively causing damage is raised with the site manager before we leave, and confirmed to you by email the same evening.
How defects are graded
Grading matters because an undifferentiated list of 300 items invites a developer to treat all of them as trivial. Ours separates what must be done now from what is contractual but not urgent, and from what is simply worth recording.
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C1
Immediate
Safety, water ingress, or deterioration that will worsen materially if left. Raised on site the same day.
Typically 0–6 items on a first inspection -
C2
Within warranty
Falls outside the tolerances in the warranty provider's technical standards. The developer is obliged to remedy these.
Typically 120–350 items on a first inspection -
C3
Record & monitor
Within tolerance now. Photographed and measured so that movement can be evidenced later if it occurs.
Typically 20–60 items on a first inspection
The report
Delivered within 48 hours as a PDF, and as a spreadsheet if you want one. Each item carries a reference number, the room, the grade, a photograph, and where relevant the specific clause of the warranty standard it falls short of.
That last part is what makes the difference. “The skirting looks bad” is an opinion. “Skirting to bedroom two, 6 mm gap to floor over a 900 mm run, exceeds the 3 mm tolerance” is not.
When the developer pushes back
Expect three responses, in this order:
- “That's within tolerance.” Sometimes true. The report cites the clause, so it is checkable rather than arguable.
- “That's normal shrinkage.” Sometimes true, which is exactly why C3 items are photographed and measured on day one.
- “Our inspector signed it off.” Their inspector works for them. That is the whole reason you instructed your own.
One round of email support is included in every fee for exactly these exchanges. If it goes further than that — to the warranty provider's resolution service or the New Homes Ombudsman — we will supply what we found, factually, without taking a position on your claim.
What we cannot do. We cannot compel a developer to do anything, and anyone promising otherwise is selling something. What an independent, evidenced, clause-referenced report does is remove the ambiguity they rely on.