‘Barratt Developments is the country’s largest and best-known housebuilder. We have been building houses since 1958, and since then have completed over 500,000 homes for people throughout the country.

We build both private and affordable housing, delivering around 18,000 new homes each year. This is spread geographically across 29 divisions throughout England, Wales and Scotland. Our homes range from 1 bedroom flats up to 6 bedroom family homes. Last year we contributed £3.3bn to the UK’s economic output, supported nearly 50,000 jobs, provided 5,300 school places and supplied £200m in local contributions.

Our vision is to lead the future of housebuilding by putting customers at the heart of everything we do.’

Our journey so far – what we’ve learnt

‘We are committed to spearheading cultural change and behaviour across the industry to achieve a safer building system. Barratt is a member of the Early Adopters Group to help steer processes and standards across the industry to ensure buildings are safe for those working and living in them.

The five key principles of the BSF Charter are embedded in our culture at Barratt and we welcomed the initiative to evidence and review our processes. Barratt was one of the first to sign up to undertake the robust benchmarking and independent verification process afforded by the BSF Champion assessment.

The formation of the Champion status and participation in it is an important and valuable step as part of rebuilding trust in the wider industry.

We welcomed the independent review and are keen to embrace new ways of working that maintain our reputation as an industry leader. The Champion assessment does that by being evidence based. The process is extremely thorough and is a valuable tool for self-evaluation and benchmarking.

The greatest areas of learning include how we might deliver and improve services through better collaboration and dialogue with stakeholders early in the process. It also includes giving greater focus on how we might build the ’golden thread’ with a focus on considering what each party needs, how to facilitate that process and how best to transfer key safety information between parties.

We are also looking to utilise different media for training and engagement, particularly with having such a diverse workforce. This means ensuring information is accessible and inclusive, ensuring we reinforce our commitment and culture regularly. These lessons and outcomes then have wider reaching benefits across all building types.

Going forward we are keen to ensure continuous review and improvement and engage more widely within the industry.

We continue to be dedicated to ensuring that our customers have a very high standard of safety. It is clear to see that the BSF Champion assessment and robust principles will help us maintain that goal, both now and in the future.’