A housing developer has been ordered to modify homes after they were built backwards.

Builders at Persimmon Homes, one of the UK’s biggest developers, made the blunder while constructing 262 properties at a new housing estate in Colchester, Essex.

It has now emerged that the workmen built an entire block of one, two, and three-bedroom homes with the windows, doors and balconies the “wrong way”.

They must now reverse these fittings to comply with planning permission.

‘Mystifying’ blunder

Martin Goss, a Colchester councillor, said the “major cock-up” from Persimmon Homes was “mystifying”.

He said: “It just beggars belief, how on earth can a developer build a set of flats the wrong way? It’s mystifying.

“To build something completely the wrong way is a major cock-up. How can a national developer make such a major mistake?

“If a builder makes a mistake, they have to bear the consequences of that. It’s gone through a long process and a number of iterations to get where it is today but obviously they now need to build it to the agreed plan.”

Previous Persimmon ‘blunders’

Persimmon Homes has previously come under fire for other blunders, including a leaky sewage system that allegedly left a family in Derby covered in rashes.

In another alleged mistake, a homeowner in Cardiff forced the company to knock down and rebuild his walls that apparently contained damaged bricks.

A spokesman for Persimmon Homes said that some alterations had already been made to the homes in Colchester. He added: “We have made some limited alterations to the position of some windows during the early stages of construction, in line with our planning consent.”