Notes of the meeting of the Consumer Committee held 8th June 2004

The Consumer Committee met on 8th June 2004.

Noting that the NHBC Standards Committee sets up, from time to time, Task Groups to review in detail separate areas of NHBC Technical Standards. It was agreed that when Task Groups are set up in the future that input from the Consumer Committee would be sought at appropriate times.

The Consumer Committee representative on the Standards Committee reported that the committee's recent meeting had been held on site at a development of 158 apartments constructed on a 13 floor hotel. The development was still in progress giving the committee the opportunity to view all areas of the construction. The principal focus of the visit had been the work being carried out by a Standards Committee Task Group developing Technical Standards for cladding.

The Committee were advised that NHBC's 'Your New Home Customer Satisfaction Survey' had been launched on 19 April. The survey will be sent annually to some 100,000 new home owners some 9 months after legal completion of the purchase of their home.

The response rates had been initially low, but week on week the numbers were building and there was confidence that survey numbers returned would be statistically robust.

It was noted that realistically meaningful results are unlikely to be available until the survey has been running for about nine months.

The Committee was advised of the results of the latest round of mystery shopping and was pleased to see the high level of satisfaction, particularly, in the area of accuracy of response and congratulated those areas of the business where significant improvement had been shown.

The response to voicemail messages left was however disappointing in that 37% of calls had not been returned. This was in contrast with the results of a recent internal audit carried out by the Telephone Steering Committee. Management will put in hand the process required to make this one of the specific performance target for all staff.

The Committee received a presentation on the work in hand to update NHBC's corporate website. This will eventually enable homeowners to obtain information about NHBC, make a claim and follow its progress on line.

The Committee will meet again on 7 September 2004 and the notes of that meeting will be posted to the website following their approval in December 2004.