What is a pre-completion inspection, and how is it different from snagging?
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A Pre-Completion Inspection (PCI) is a formal step under the New Homes Quality Code: before you complete, your developer must give you the opportunity to inspect the home or to appoint a suitably qualified inspector to do it for you, using the Code’s own checklist. A snagging survey is a broader independent inspection that is not limited to that checklist. Under version 2 of the Code (March 2026), anyone you appoint to carry out a PCI must belong to a recognised professional body such as CABE, CIOB, ICWCI, RICS or RPSA and hold professional indemnity insurance.
What the Code actually gives you
The New Homes Quality Code requires your developer to give you the opportunity to carry out a pre-completion inspection of the home, or to appoint a suitably qualified inspector to carry it out on your behalf, before completion.
Version 2 of the Code, published in March 2026, added the option of doing the inspection yourself using the NHQB’s own Pre-Completion Inspection Checklist. Commentators have pointed out that the checklist assumes a degree of technical knowledge, so in practice this suits people who either have a construction background or can bring someone who does.
The qualification requirement, and why it matters to you
This is the part most people do not know. Under version 2, an inspector you appoint for a PCI must be a member of a recognised professional association experienced in residential surveying — CABE, CIOB, ICWCI, RICS or RPSA are the examples given — must hold relevant professional indemnity insurance, and must work within their competency.
Crucially, a developer may refuse entry to an inspector it does not consider suitably qualified. If that happens on the day, you have lost your slot and possibly your inspection fee. So before you book anyone for a PCI specifically, ask which body they belong to and get the answer in writing.
How a snagging survey differs
A snagging survey is not governed by the Code and is not restricted to its checklist. That is its advantage: an inspector can record anything they consider below standard, in whatever detail is useful, rather than answering a fixed set of questions.
The two are not alternatives so much as different tools. A PCI exercises a specific right at a specific moment. A snagging survey gives you the full picture.
What happens to the defects that are found
Version 2 of the Code clarifies that where issues identified during a pre-completion inspection breach warranty technical standards, the developer is responsible for addressing them, ideally before legal completion and otherwise within 30 days.
That is a meaningful improvement on the previous position, and it is a good reason to make sure anything you find is written down and photographed rather than mentioned in passing on site.
Sources
- NHQB — New Homes Quality Code v2 (March 2026)
- Brodies — Pre-completion inspections under the New Homes Quality Code
We link our sources because a guide that states figures without them is asking you to take our word for it. Where we could not verify something, we have left it out rather than rounding it up.