Your right to inspect your own new build
If your developer is registered with the New Homes Quality Board and you reserved on or after their activation date, the New Homes Quality Code says your developer must give you the opportunity to inspect your new home yourself before completion, or to appoint a professional inspector to do it for you.
This page outlines who the Code covers, what it entitles you to, what changed when the Code was updated in March 2026, when the inspection takes place, and what to do if your developer refuses you access.
The content in this article applies to new build homes sold outright in the UK by developers registered with the New Homes Quality Board. sendingsnags is independent of the New Homes Quality Board.
Does the New Homes Quality Code apply to your home?
It applies where two conditions are both true.
The Code applies to your home if:
- Your developer is registered with the New Homes Quality Board
- You reserved your home on or after the date your developer's registration was activated
The Code is a voluntary code that developers sign up to. Once a developer completes registration, every home reserved from that date is covered by the Code and by the New Homes Ombudsman Service. A home reserved before the activation date is not covered, even with the same developer.
| Condition | How to check it |
|---|---|
| Your developer is registered with the New Homes Quality Board | Search the register on the NHQB website at nhqb.org.uk |
| You reserved on or after your developer's activation date | Your reservation agreement and the paperwork with it should name the code that applies to your purchase. If it does not, put the question to the developer's sales team in writing |
If either condition is not met, the Code does not give you this entitlement. Your reservation paperwork usually names another consumer code instead, most often the Consumer Code for Home Builders or the Consumer Code for New Homes, and those codes set their own expectations. You can still ask to inspect before completion, and many developers allow it. Shared ownership homes sit outside the New Homes Quality Code, and buyers of shared ownership homes should check their own paperwork for what their housing provider has agreed to.
What does the Code entitle you to?
The opportunity to carry out a pre-completion inspection of your home yourself, or to appoint a suitably qualified inspector to carry it out for you.
The Code sets this out in its section on keeping the customer informed and pre-completion inspection checks. In plain terms, it provides the following.
| What the Code says | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| You must be offered the chance to inspect the home yourself, or to have a suitably qualified inspector do it for you | The choice is yours. You can inspect the home yourself, and you do not have to pay a professional to exercise the entitlement |
| The inspection happens once the notice to complete has been served and before the completion date, or earlier if you and the developer both agree | There is a defined window, and you can ask for an earlier visit |
| The notice period is normally expected to run for at least 14 calendar days | The window is normally at least two weeks, unless you have agreed otherwise |
| The developer must tell you that a standard checklist has to be used, the NHQB Pre-Completion Inspection Checklist | The inspection is recorded on the official checklist, whoever carries it out |
| The developer must tell you that the checklist was written for professional inspectors, so you may miss some requirements or read some standards differently | An honest warning, and a reason to prepare rather than a reason not to inspect |
| Where the inspection finds issues that fall below the warranty technical standards, the developer is responsible for putting them right, ideally before legal completion and otherwise within 30 days | What you find is the developer's to put right, and the Code sets a timescale for the fix |
The Code is also clear that the inspection is not intended to hold up completion. It gives you a record of the home's condition before you own it, and it obliges the developer to respond to what the record shows.
What changed in March 2026?
Version 2 of the Code made self-inspection an express option in the clause that governs the inspection, widened the inspection window, and attached the standard checklist and two safeguards to it.
The earlier version of the Code, published in October 2023, described the developer giving you the opportunity to visit the home and appoint a suitably qualified inspector, with the inspection taking place within the five days after the notice to complete. Elsewhere in that version, the completion checklist already referred to the customer inspecting the home or appointing an inspector, so buyers were not without a route before March 2026. What the update did was make the route express, in the operative clause, and set out how it works.
| Version 1, October 2023 | Version 2, March 2026 |
|---|---|
| The opportunity to visit the home, and appoint a suitably qualified inspector | The opportunity to undertake a pre-completion inspection yourself, or appoint a suitably qualified inspector |
| Within the five days after the notice to complete | Any time after the notice to complete and before completion, or earlier by agreement |
| The checklist is described as the inspector's template | The developer must tell a self-inspecting buyer that the standard checklist must be used |
| No specific safeguards for a buyer inspecting alone | The developer must tell a self-inspecting buyer that the checklist was designed for a professional |
Which version applies to you depends on when you reserved. Version 2 applies to reservations made on or after 2 March 2026. If you reserved before that date under a registered developer, Version 1 applies, and your reservation paperwork should say so.
When does the inspection take place?
After your developer serves the notice to complete, and before the completion date.
The notice to complete is the formal notice telling you that your home will be ready for you to complete and move in from a specific date. The Code expects this notice period to be at least 14 calendar days in most cases, so that the legal work and the inspection both fit inside it.
To make sure the inspection happens:
- Ask at reservation how the developer arranges pre-completion inspections, and note the answer
- When the notice to complete arrives, ask in writing for an inspection date straight away
- Ask for the visit to take place in daylight, because the standard checklist expects surfaces to be inspected in natural light
- Allow plenty of time, because a whole home takes longer to inspect than most buyers expect, and bring someone to help if you can
- If you want to inspect earlier than the notice, ask: the Code allows an earlier inspection where you and the developer both agree
If your developer says the inspection cannot happen before completion, you can still inspect the home as soon as you have the keys. The entitlement is to the opportunity before completion, and the developer's responsibility for issues that breach the warranty technical standards does not end at completion.
Do you have to use the NHQB checklist?
Yes, for a pre-completion inspection carried out under the Code.
The Code says a standard checklist has to be used for the inspection, and that the developer must tell you so. The NHQB Pre-Completion Inspection Checklist is published by the New Homes Quality Board and is free to use. A digital copy is allowed, as long as it carries the same checks as the original.
The checklist also carries guidance on how to inspect. The Code gives one example itself: internal walls are looked at in daylight, from at least two metres away, without a light pointed at the surface. Guidance of this kind determines whether a mark counts as a snag at all, so we recommend reading it before you start.
The checklist is the framework and the record the Code asks for. It is not a method for finding snags, describing them or photographing them, and that is where most buyer inspections fall short. Your own room-by-room notes and photos sit alongside the checklist, and a clear, photographed snag list is what your developer acts on when the checklist records that something is not right. Our page Can I do my own snagging inspection? covers that method in full.
Can your developer refuse you access?
Only where you have not taken the health and safety precautions the developer told you to take.
The Code says the developer must tell you about the health and safety precautions you must take if you are allowed onto a site before the work is finished, and it allows the developer to refuse access to you, or to anyone acting on your behalf, if you do not take them. This is the only ground on which the Code permits refusal. The Code does not allow a developer to refuse an inspection because it is inconvenient, because the home is not quite finished, or because you have chosen to inspect it yourself rather than appoint a professional.
If your developer refuses or delays the inspection:
- Ask again in writing, and say that you are asking for the pre-completion inspection the New Homes Quality Code provides for
- Confirm in the same message that you will follow any health and safety instructions the site team gives you
- Keep every message and the dates, because the record is what an ombudsman looks at
- If access is still refused, raise a complaint through your developer's complaints procedure, which the Code requires them to have
- If the complaint is not resolved, the New Homes Ombudsman Service at nhos.org.uk can consider complaints about registered developers
We always recommend keeping the tone factual throughout. A written request that names the entitlement and confirms you will follow site rules is significantly harder to refuse than a verbal one.
What happens to the snags you find?
The Code uses a 30-day period in three places, and they are not the same obligation, so it helps to know which one applies to what you found.
- Issues from the pre-completion inspection that breach the warranty technical standards are the developer's to put right, ideally before legal completion and otherwise within 30 days.
- Snags you report after you move in fall under after-sales service. The developer must acknowledge them as soon as possible and, in most cases, settle them within 30 days. Where there is a significant reason for delay, they must explain it and update you at least monthly until the snag is done.
- A formal complaint has its own clock. The developer must send you a complaint assessment and response letter within 30 days of the complaint start date. That is a deadline to respond, not to finish the repairs: the letter sets out what they accept, what they dispute, and how and when the work will be done.
A snag reported after completion that is not put right within 30 days can be taken into the complaints procedure, which is where the third clock starts.
A snag list from a pre-completion inspection does two things. It gives the developer a record to work through before you move in, and it fixes the condition of the home at the point you took ownership, so that anything you find later can be dated against it.
Not every item on a buyer's list will be a breach of the technical standards, and the Code does not oblige a developer to change something that meets the standard it was built to. This is why the way you describe a snag, and the photos behind it, determine how the conversation goes. A factual description with a size and a location, and a photo that shows it, is harder to dispute than a complaint.
We always recommend a second inspection after you move in, and again as the home settles over its first months. Some issues only appear once the heating has run or the weather has turned, and a dated list from each inspection is the record that supports you if they do.
How we can help
sendingsnags is an app that turns your own walkthrough of a new build home into a clear, photographed snag report you can send to your developer or housing provider. The Code warns that a buyer inspecting alone may miss some requirements, and the app is built for exactly that: it takes you through every room with a checklist of what to look for, and each check explains what good looks like with an example drawing of the fault.
Every snag is photographed, described in your words with clearer wording suggested alongside, and graded, so the report you send with your inspection is one your developer can act on rather than argue with.
You can start your report at sendingsnags.com. We hope you find it useful.