AnnualReportFinancialStatments2023

Annual Report &

Annual Report & Financial Statements 2023 Chief Executive’s Review Cont. Strategic Report Building safety On 13 March 2023 the Group signed the Self Remediation Terms and Contract for England with the UK Government, formalising the commitments made by the Group in April 2022 under the Building Safety Pledge, to investigate and remediate any life critical fire-safety issues on buildings over 11 metres in England developed by the Group. On 5 June 2023 the Group signed the Scottish Safer Building Accord, an industry commitment supporting the remediation and/or mitigation of external wall cladding systems on buildings of 11 metres and above developed by the Group. The industry is consulting with Homes for Scotland and the Scottish Government to agree a legally binding, long-form contract to give effect to the principles of the Accord. In practice, Keepmoat Homes has traditionally only built houses sold as new homes and has very few apartment schemes in its current and legacy development portfolio. Keepmoat Homes has identified all those buildings in the 11 metres and above category in England and Scotland and reports periodically to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (“DLUHC”) on those buildings in England. The Board is not currently aware of any material life-critical fire safety issues with respect to these buildings. Whilst there remains some uncertainty about the exact nature of remediation which may be required in Scotland, we have made our assessment on a consistent basis with the Self Remediation Terms which apply in England. Keepmoat continues to believe that building safety is an industry-wide issue involving many types of organisations and therefore needs an industry-wide solution. People Our people are at the heart of our business and fundamental to everything we do. We are committed to making Keepmoat a great place to work, enabling us to attract the brightest and best talent, making Keepmoat the employer of choice in the homebuilding sector. We invest in our people enabling them to develop their careers with us and I am delighted to say that in our latest employee engagement survey 79% of our people would recommend Keepmoat as a great place to work. Summary and outlook Our success in the current market conditions is a clear validation that our business strategy is the right one and looking ahead I am cautiously optimistic, based on the consistent demand we have seen since the start of 2023 from our private customers and despite the ongoing cost of living pressures and the higher mortgage rates that have followed increases in the Bank of England Base Rate. The long-term fundamentals for the UK housing sector are strong. There remains a shortage of high-quality, affordable new homes across the country. We are convinced that these fundamentals, in the context of Keepmoat’s robust multi-tenure Partnership model and the strength of our experienced leadership and management teams, mean that we are well positioned to manage the business effectively through any market scenario. I firmly believe that our multi-tenure Partnership approach and our expertise in the first time-buyer market, together with our favourable market positioning, focused towards smaller, more affordable product, will continue to provide resilience, should adverse market conditions persist for a prolonged period. Finally, but most importantly, I would like to thank all our people, our supply chain, and our business partners, for their contribution to our success and for all their hard work. We could not have achieved what we have without them. Keepmoat’s robust multitenure partnership model and the strength of our experienced leadership and management teams, mean that we are well positioned to trade effectively through any market scenario. 12 KEEPMOAT.COM 13