Vistry has revealed that complying with the Government’s second staircase rule on high-rise projects has already cost the business £19m.

Announcing improved annual results this morning, chief executive said a combination of loss of planned units and extra costs in building extra staircases had already impacted the business last year.

Despite this Fitzgerald said that Vistry has made strong progress towards shifting towards the country’s leading partnership business with sector-leading improvement in turnover and profits.

The transition saw Vistry delayer and simplify its structure, reducing regional businesses from 32 to 26.

This incurred restructuring costs of nearly £30m last year, mainly down to redundancies and office closures.

Despite this, reported revenue jumped 29% to £3.6bn, generating a 23% upswing in profit to £305m last year.

Fitzgerald said: “The resilience of our Partnerships model was clearly demonstrated in 2023.

“The Group delivered a total of 16,118 new homes, down only 5.4% on prior year proforma, outperforming the wider peer group.

“Excluding the former house building business, the partnerships business delivered year on year growth in revenue and maintained a ROCE of around 40%.”

He said that the transition to a fully partnerships business made significant progress, and 67% (10,722) of the total homes delivered partner funded and open market sales now at  33% (5,396).

Fitzgerald added that the firm was stepping up the use of timber-frame housing as a key part of its operational and sustainability strategy.

The firm reopened its East Midlands timber frame manufacturing plant following the completion of the recent strategic review.

Combined with its factories in Warrington and Leicester, Vistry now has the capacity to deliver 8,000 units from its operations.

This year it aims to deliver over 4,000 units, up from 2,400 in 2023 with plans to increase output towards capacity and beyond.

He said: “We are manufacturing open panel and hybrid panel timber frames for Vistry business units across the country and our product includes standard house types for our affordable housing range and all three of our brands: Bovis Homes, Linden Homes and Countryside Homes.

“We have also introduced roof trusses and floor cassettes to our production lines, with full integration of production of this line being effective from H2 2024 onwards.”

Fitzgerald said Vistry was now on track to deliver strong growth in completions this year, targeting it excess of 17,500 units.