How to write a snagging report a builder will act on

What a snagging report is for, and who reads it

The report has one job: to get the defects on a new build fixed before you complete, or soon after. To write it well, think about who actually reads it.

The site manager reads the summary table and decides what goes to which trade. Customer care logs each item against your plot after completion. The trades read only their own items, and only the part that says where to go and what to do. And if a defect is still open in year two and becomes a warranty claim, the warranty provider reads it as evidence of when it was first reported and what it looked like then.

In the UK, a builder is normally responsible for fixing defects reported during the first two years of an NHBC Buildmark warranty or an equivalent policy. If your developer is registered with the New Homes Quality Board, the New Homes Quality Code also gives you the right to a pre-completion inspection by a suitably qualified inspector. Check whether your developer is registered before relying on it.

The structure of a report that gets used

Four parts, in this order, because each reader stops at a different point.

1. A cover page with the facts. Development name, plot number, full address, inspection date, who inspected, and a phone number and email. Reports get forwarded away from the email that carried them, so the document has to identify itself.
2. A summary table. Every snag on one or two pages: number, short title, priority, status, location and trade. This is what the site manager prints and carries.
3. One entry per snag. Description, expected remedy, trade, priority and the photographs for that one item, on its own page. This is what the trade works from.
4. Photographs with each entry, not in an appendix. Forty unlabelled photographs at the back is the most common reason an item comes back marked “could not locate”.

The summary table is the per-snag entries collapsed to a row each, so generate the report from one register rather than typing it twice.Site Audit builds the cover, the table and the per-snag pages from the same entries.

The five facts every entry needs

Leave one of these out and the item comes back with a question, or gets closed wrongly.

1. A location precise enough to stand alone. Not “bedroom” but “Bedroom 2, wall opposite the door, 300 mm above the skirting, left of the socket”. A plasterer who has never met you should be able to walk to the spot with only that sentence.
2. A factual description with a measurement. “Horizontal crack in render, approximately 900 mm long, opening to roughly 2 mm at the widest point, from the window cill towards the corner”. A measurement turns an opinion into a record.
3. The remedy you expect. “Cut out, re-render and redecorate to match the adjacent finish”. This is the field most people skip, and it decides whether the fix is a smear of filler or a proper repair. If unsure, write “rectify to the current NHBC Standards” and let the builder propose a method.
4. The trade or owner. Plasterer, tiler, painter, joiner, electrician, plumber, groundworker. If you do not know, put “site manager to allocate” rather than leaving it blank.
5. A priority, and a before-completion flag. High for safety, water ingress and anything that stops you living in the house. Medium for things that do not work properly. Low for cosmetics. Separately, mark what must be done before you complete, because that is the only point at which you hold real leverage.

Numbering, and never re-using a number

Number every snag from 1 and never renumber. Snag 23 has to still be snag 23 in the third revision and in the customer care email six months later, because that number is how everyone refers to it.

New items found on re-inspection take the next numbers from the end of the list. A closed item stays in the report marked closed, with the date. An item you were wrong about is marked withdrawn, not deleted, so nobody wonders where 14 went. Renumber between revisions and none of the emails line up with any of the reports any more.

Photographs that put the trade in the right room

Each snag needs at least two photographs. A locating shot, wide enough to include a door, a window or a fitted unit, so the reader knows which room and which wall. Then a detail shot, close enough to show the defect, with a tape or a coin in frame where size matters.

Caption every photograph. “Bedroom 2, from the door” and “Crack detail, tape at widest point” take seconds each and remove any argument about what the image shows. An uncaptioned photograph makes the reader guess, and they will guess wrong.

For finish defects, shoot with the light raking across the surface rather than straight on. A wall photographed under flat daylight looks perfect in the image and poor in person, and the decorator will say so. Stand at the window and shoot along the wall, or hold a torch flat to the surface. Circle small defects on the image. There is a fuller method in the guide to photographing construction defects.

Language that gets action

Write every description as a statement of fact that a stranger could verify by standing in front of the defect. Nothing else belongs in it.

That means no adjectives that carry an opinion. “Shoddy”, “appalling” and “unacceptable” do not describe the defect, they describe how you feel about it, and they invite argument. “Grout missing along 600 mm of the joint between the shower tray and the tiled wall” cannot be argued with, and it tells the tiler what to bring.

Do not speculate about cause unless you can see it. “Water staining to ceiling below the bathroom, approximately 200 mm across, damp to the touch” is a fact. “The plumber has obviously not sealed the bath” is a guess, and if it turns out to be the shower waste, the whole entry loses credibility.

What to leave out

Forty unarguable items get cleared. A hundred and forty where most are opinion get skimmed, and the six that matter get lost. Three categories go in the bin before you send.

• Design preferences. You would have put the socket on the other wall. The builder built what was on the approved drawings. Not a snag.
• Damage after handover. If the removals firm scraped the hall wall, that is yours. Snag before you move anything in, and date every photograph.
• Normal shrinkage. Hairline cracks at plasterboard joints, above skirtings and around door frames appear during the first heating season. Most builders make good once at the end of the first year. List them separately for that visit, unless the crack is outside what the current NHBC Standards accept, in which case it goes in the main report with a measurement.

If unsure whether something is inside tolerance, measure it and record the measurement anyway. The current edition of the NHBC Standards, or your warranty provider’s equivalent, decides. Do not quote a figure from a previous job, because the standards get revised.

How to send it, and what to ask for in reply

Send the report to one named person, usually the site manager before completion and customer care after it, and copy your solicitor if you have not yet completed. Send a PDF, not a folder of photographs or a spreadsheet.

Ask for three things in the covering email: written acknowledgement of receipt, a written response against each numbered item saying whether it is accepted and if not why, and a date for each accepted item or for the visit that will deal with them. Keep the email short. The report does the talking.

Expect the response to split items into those done before completion and those deferred to the end of the first year. That is normal, but get the split in writing, because the people you agree it with will be on another site by the time it matters.

Re-inspection and closing items

Nothing is closed until you have seen it closed. Do not accept a photograph from the site manager as proof, and do not close an item on the phone. Walk the plot with the report, check each item claimed as done, and record the date.

Where the fix is not to standard, do not open a new snag. Reopen the original number with a note and a new photograph, so the history shows that item 7 was reported, attempted and is still open. When a defect reappears in month ten, the fact that it was closed in month two is the whole argument. Keep and date every revision.

A worked example: the sample report

To see all of this in one place, open the sample snagging report, a real PDF produced from an inspection register. It is short, eight snags on a small block, which makes it easy to follow.

The cover. One page. The inspection company, the report title, the development name, then a plain block of facts: address, client, inspection date, the inspector by name, an email and a phone number. Nothing else. Anyone who finds this PDF in a forwarded email six months later can tell what it is and who to ring.

The summary table. Four counts at the top, total, open, in progress and resolved, then one row per snag with the number, a short title, a colour coded priority, the status, the location and the person assigned. Item 1 is cracked render to an external wall on the north elevation, high priority, assigned to the render contractor. Item 2 is a chipped tile at the main entry, medium priority, assigned to a named tiler. The whole plot reads in thirty seconds.

The per-snag pages. Take item 2. Number and priority at the top, then the title, “Chipped tile at main entry”. The first photograph shows the tiled floor with the chip visible, captioned “Chipped corner, entry threshold”. Beside it, a panel with the status, the location down to floor level, the tiler and their company, a due date and a category. Below, the description: a corner chip to the floor tile directly inside the entry door, a trip and cut hazard in a high traffic area, remedy replace the tile and re-grout.

Count the five facts: location, description, remedy, trade, priority. All on a page a tiler can read in under a minute. Item 1, the cracked render, follows the same pattern with additional captioned photographs, the crack at elevation scale and then close up: the locating shot and detail shot pairing from earlier in this guide.

Notice what is missing. There is no paragraph about how disappointing the standard is. The report says what is wrong, where, and what to do about it, then stops.

A printable template, and doing it on your phone

To do this on paper, the printable snag list template has the same columns: number, location, description, remedy, trade, priority and before-completion. Print one per room, walk the plot in a fixed order, and type it up that evening.

The typing up is where the hours go, and it is why most paper lists never become a report with photographs against each item. Site Audit is an Android app built for this loop: photograph each snag with as many shots as it needs, caption and mark them up, set the location, trade and priority, and export the PDF from the phone. It works offline and needs no account. One project, including the PDF, is free with a small credit line in the footer. Pro is a one-time A$29.99 purchase, local pricing varies, for unlimited projects, clean PDFs, a report per contractor and CSV export.

Either way the report is the same document: cover, table, one entry per snag, five facts, captioned photographs, no adjectives. For the walk itself, see the room by room snagging checklist, and for what happens to open items after you move in, the guide to the defects liability period.