Watkin Jones ‘creating margin’ out of building safety remediation work, firm says

Refurbishment is “becoming a new business stream” for Watkin Jones as a result of work to remediate its past developments, now deemed unsafe in the wake of the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire.

According to company results published last week, 13 Watkin Jones-developed leasehold buildings fall within the scope of the developers’ remediation contract, which the student accommodation and BTR specialist signed up to in 2023.

Five of these buildings are included in the provision, which now stands at £48m.

Building safety costs were a major factor in the firm making a £42.5m loss in the year to September 2023 although these have been drastically reduced to around £300,000 in the year to September 2024.

No further buildings were added to the building safety provision during the 2024 financial year, and the firm said that “to date, no communications have been received from building owners for any of these remaining properties”.

Chief financial officer Simon Jones said: “We built all these buildings, so we’ve got drawings for them.

“We believe we can do it much more cost effectively, and one of the big things we’re seeing is with a lot of our clients they’re using us to fix their buildings in terms of remediation.

“So it’s becoming a new business stream for us as well. We’re creating margin out of this issue.”

Watkin Jones chief executive Alex Pease added that the firm’s refurbishment business, called Refresh, had enjoyed a “very encouraging start” to trading.

The Refresh business brought in revenue of £10.9m in its first year of operation, with gross profit of £1.5m.

“I think the opportunity there is bigger than we anticipated. We’ve got a really interesting pipeline developing,” said Pease.