Taylor Wimpey margins to be hit by Brexit stockpiling

Taylor Wimpey boss Pete Redfern’s week got worse on Thursday as he admitted Brexit stockpiling would hit margins just days after pulling out of a controversial deal to buy one of the housebuilder’s own flats at a discount.

Pay campaigners were outraged at Redfern using a 5% staff discount worth £100,000 to buy a £2 million luxury London flat and he pulled out of the purchase this week.

The boss, who earned £3.2 million last year, said: “I recognise it’s now such a sensitive area it probably means that it isn’t realistic to buy property from the business, which given that’s what we do is a shame. It’s unfortunate but that’s life... I think it is very unlikely that any of our executive directors will use that scheme.”

His comments came as a trading update knocked 9.8p, or 5%, off the shares to 182.5p.

The company is suffering from rising cost inflation thanks to higher materials prices as firms in its supply chain hold “defensive additional buffer stock”.

Although the order book is up 12% to £2.4 billion in the year to date and sales stronger, the higher costs mean “we expect margins to be slightly lower”.

Redfern said: “When the supply chain is stretched anyway, trying to build up those stocks has quite a material marginal impact in the very short term.”

Costs will remain higher “during the course of this year”, the boss added.