The New Homes Quality Code Pre-Completion Inspection: What the Developer Has to Have Done Before the Customer's Inspector Arrives

The pre-completion inspection was the point at which the New Homes Quality Code changed the relationship between a housebuilder and its customer. The customer, or an inspector acting for them, walks the finished home before legal completion with a checklist the developer did not write, and everything they find is a snag the developer has to settle on a clock. A developer who treats that visit as the inspection has already lost the day. This article sets out what the Code requires, the developer's own inspection that should have happened first, the certificates that must exist, the home demonstration, and the customer care obligations that start when the keys are handed over.

The Code and its second version

The New Homes Quality Code is administered by the New Homes Quality Board and applies to developers registered with it. Version 2 was published in March 2026 and applies to homes reserved from 2 March 2026; Version 1, from October 2023, continues to apply to earlier reservations, so a site with plots reserved either side of the date is running both. The Code covers the customer's journey from marketing through reservation, construction, inspection and completion to the two-year after-sales period, and it is enforced through the New Homes Ombudsman Service, to which a customer can refer a complaint the developer has not resolved.

The provisions that matter on site are in Part 2, on the period up to completion, and Part 3, on after-sales. Three things follow from them that a site team has to plan for: the customer's right to inspect before completion, the requirement that the home is complete before it is handed over, and the timescales for putting things right afterwards.

The pre-completion inspection

Under clause 2.8 of Version 2, the customer may inspect the home, or appoint a suitably qualified inspector to do it, after the developer has served notice that the home is ready to complete and before legal completion. A suitably qualified inspector is one holding membership of one of the bodies the Code names, with professional indemnity insurance, and the inspection is carried out against the NHQB's own pre-completion inspection checklist, not the inspector's. The developer cannot refuse the inspection and cannot restrict it to a token visit; the notice to complete has to give enough time for the inspection to happen, and the Code says the completion notice period is usually at least fourteen calendar days.

The NHQB checklist is a room-by-room and element-by-element list with guidance on what is and is not a defect, and it uses viewing distances and tolerances that the developer's own quality team should know before the inspector arrives: internal surfaces viewed in daylight from two metres, glazing viewed from a stated distance with small scratches below a stated size accepted, external finishes from ten metres, and a maximum gap at skirtings. The guidance is public. A developer whose own inspection uses different or looser criteria will spend the inspection arguing.

The outcome is a list of items the inspector considers defects. The developer reviews each, accepts it as a snag or records why it is not a defect against the checklist guidance, and the agreed list goes onto the plot snagging register with a source of "customer pre-completion inspection". Items that are breaches of the warranty standard are to be put right before completion where possible, or within thirty days.

The inspection that has to come first

The developer's own plot completion inspection is not required by the Code in those words. It is required by arithmetic. A customer's inspector who finds forty items on a plot the developer had already signed off has found forty things the developer's inspection missed, and each is now a snag on the register, a customer communication, and a thirty-day clock. The developer's inspection has to be at least as thorough as the customer's and has to happen before the notice to complete is served.

A plot completion checklist that does the job is structured the way the plot is walked: hall and stairs, living room, kitchen and dining, utility, cloakroom, each bedroom, en-suite, bathroom, loft, garage, the external envelope, the plot and its boundaries, the whole-house services, and the certificates. Each line has the item, the acceptance standard, a pass, snag or not-applicable result, and space for the snag reference. It runs to two hundred lines or more for a three-bedroom house, and the number is the point: the customer's inspector will look at everything, so the developer must have looked at everything first. Every snag found goes on the plot register with a category, an owner, a target date and a "customer visible" flag, and the notice to complete is not served until the register shows the plot clear or the remaining items agreed.

Complete means complete

Clause 2.10 requires the developer to hand over a complete new home, and the Code's position is that the customer should not be asked to complete on a home that is not finished. Where something genuinely cannot be finished before completion, for instance external works dependent on the adjacent plot, the Code allows for it to be agreed in writing with the customer, with a date. The handover certificate should carry a schedule of incomplete work for exactly that purpose, signed by both parties, and it should be short. A schedule that lists internal finishing items is a home that was not ready, and the ombudsman will read it that way.

The certificates

The plot cannot be handed over without the documents that prove it complies, and the customer's solicitor will ask for most of them. The plot certificate schedule lists them with the regulation behind each and the issuer, and it is completed plot by plot, not site by site:

• The building control completion certificate under regulation 17 of the Building Regulations 2010, which the building control body issues within eight weeks of the completion notice where it is satisfied, and which is evidence but not conclusive evidence of compliance.
• The electrical installation certificate to BS 7671:2018+A4:2026 and the Part P notification.
• The Gas Safe notification and the Building Regulations compliance certificate for gas appliances, and the commissioning certificates for the heating system and any renewable technology.
• The energy performance certificate and the Part L evidence, including the air tightness test result where one was required.
• The Part F ventilation commissioning record and, for a home designed under Part O, the overheating compliance evidence.
• Water regulations notification and any approved contractor certificate under the Water Supply (Water Fittings) Regulations 1999.
• The structural warranty documentation. NHBC Standards 2026 apply to homes whose foundations began on or after 1 January 2026, and the warranty provider's own inspection stages have to have been passed. The Building Safety Act 2022 section 144 provides for new build home warranties of at least fifteen years, subject to regulations that set the detail.
• Fire safety information where the home is in a building to which regulation 38 applies, and the fire door and smoke alarm records.
• Manufacturer warranties for the boiler, appliances, windows and doors, registered where registration is required for the warranty to be valid.

A missing certificate is a completion that cannot happen on the date, and a certificate schedule with counters that show how many are outstanding per plot is how a site manager sees the problem in week eight rather than on the day.

The home demonstration

Clause 2.11 of the Code lists what the developer must provide at or before completion, and the home demonstration is one of them: a walk through the home with the customer showing how the heating, hot water, ventilation, electrical, alarms, appliances, windows and external items work, where the stopcock and the consumer unit are, and what maintenance the customer is responsible for. It is recorded, with the systems covered, the questions asked and any follow-ups, and the customer signs it. Six months later, when the complaint is that the ventilation system is noisy, the demonstration record that shows the customer was told how to set it is the developer's answer, and the customer who was never shown has a legitimate complaint.

After the keys: the clocks

Part 3 of the Code sets the after-sales obligations and they run on timescales. Snags reported by the customer are acknowledged promptly, and the Code expects them to be resolved within thirty days, with monthly updates where an item takes longer. A complaint follows a defined process: acknowledged within five calendar days, a path to resolution set out within ten, a response within thirty, and a closure letter by fifty-six days, with updates every twenty-eight days after that; if the developer has not resolved the complaint by fifty-six days the customer can refer it to the New Homes Ombudsman Service. Emergency issues, defined in the Code's glossary, have their own faster response. The customer can complain for two years from reservation or completion, whichever is later, and the after-sales service runs for two years from completion.

Those timescales are only manageable from a log that calculates them. A customer care log with a key that turns the category into a target date, a days-open column, a flag at thirty days and a monthly-update-due date does the arithmetic. A customer journey log that dates the complaint letters from the day the complaint was received does the rest. A developer that tracks these in an inbox will miss a date, and the missed date is the ombudsman's first finding.

The developer's position

Read as a whole, the Code asks the developer to prove three things: that the home was inspected and finished before the customer was asked to complete, that the customer was given the information and the demonstration, and that anything reported afterwards was handled within the stated times. Each of the three is a record, and each record has to exist per plot. The site team that builds the plot checklist, the certificate schedule, the snagging register and the customer care log into its completion process from the first plot will find the customer's inspector a formality. The one that starts at the first complaint will not.