I bought an off-plan studio apartment from The Guinness Partnership and moved in in September 2022. I immediately discovered that the wet room had a colossal problem. The floor sloped in the wrong direction, channelling the shower water away from the drains and into the hall. Guinness has admitted it is a flaw with every studio flat in the development, but has repeatedly ignored emails and deflected responsibility. Our contract states that any non-emergency defects will be resolved within one month of reporting. However, Guinness claims that this is a “design flaw” and not a “defect” and thus not bound by the same obligation. A recent survey valued the flat at £10,000 less than I paid for it, citing this issue as one of the reasons.
CA, London
You first contacted me in April after seven months of fruitless complaints. It’s taken both of us a further eight months to enable you to shower without flooding your home. In that time, Guinness has delayed, obfuscated and misled. First things first: what is the difference between a “defect” and a “design flaw”? “Semantic gymnastics,” according to consumer lawyer Gary Rycroft from Joseph A Jones Solicitors. “The flat owners bought a flat expecting it to work and it does not.”
Guinness appears to doubt its own distinction. It repeatedly denied the floors sloped in the wrong direction, which might count as a “design flaw”. Instead, it blamed an insufficiently screened shower unit, which is an uncontestable “defect”. Whether “defect” or “design flaw”, the wordplay has kept you, and at least 10 other residents, waiting for 15 months.
Way back at the start of May, Guinness told me that it was using an empty flat to test whether a larger screen would contain the water, and apologised for the delay. Then it fell silent again. When I next chased, it apologised for “shortcomings” in its communications, and stated that, a month on, its architects were still testing the larger shower screen.
By mid-June, it announced it had found two shower screens that contained the shower water, and would be inviting you, and your neighbours, to choose their preferred design.
Another two months passed in silence. I chased again and it finally invited residents to view its solution. They claim the screen, tested in a completely different type of bathroom without the crucial gradient, would have blocked access to the studio wet rooms, and a ridge of unsightly silicon sealant would have plugged the gap between the screen and the sloping floor. The promised second option didn’t exist.
I pointed out to Guinness that it had taken a year to come up with a rudimentary and ineffective solution. It replied that everyone, except you, had accepted the proposal. Five of your neighbours confirmed they had done no such thing. It also insisted that two design mock-ups had replicated the conditions in the affected bathrooms. Both claims were untrue.
Guinness blamed a “misunderstanding” and said it would install and test further options that mirrored the wet rooms in question. “None of this seems to have been particularly smooth on our part, which we are very embarrassed about,” it said.
So back to square one. August became September without a word. Again, I chased. This time Guinness blamed the delivery of the wrong kind of shower screen. It had not thought to update residents.
You were eventually shown a screen and sealant that you were willing to accept, although your neighbours were not. But it was another two months of silence and prodding before it was installed, just in time for Christmas Day.
New homeowners are notoriously badly served when it comes to protections. If a developer refuses to heed faults, they can complain to their new home warranty issuer and there’s the recent option of a New Homes Ombudsman Service but many developers, including Guinness, have yet to sign up.
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