Good morning, everybody. Thank you for that. Thanks for joining us. We are making some advances because you can see me this time, but I can't see you. I think that's worst of both worlds for me. Quite a lot to cover this morning, so I'll get into it. You have three presenters, as you heard, Chris, Jennie, and myself. Bulk of my presentation is up front, so I'll cover some key underlying issues, the summary pieces, hand over to Jennie on the operational side, Chris on the finance pieces, and then I will finish just with an overall quick summary on the outlook before we lead into Q&As. I'm already struggling to move on the slides. Victoria, can we move on to the first of my slides, my proper slides, please? Thank you. Some overview issues.
I think if I stand back from 2020, we came into the year with some pretty clear priorities and pretty simple. To focus on costs, to get the efficiency of the business where it needed to be, to make things simpler, to focus on the balance between sales rates on site and pricing. You may remember, in those early weeks of the year, we were very focused on making some selling price gains, and we started to do so. Obviously, by the end of the first quarter, that had all been rather overtaken by the pandemic.
I think it's just interesting to sort of look back for a second and just remind you, I think our two key priorities for the balance of 2020 evolved during particularly April and a little bit May, which was about making sure we interacted in the right way with all of our stakeholders, with our employees, with our customers, with government, and with investors. Our focus with investors was really our second priority. For us, we took the view that it was more about making sure the business exited the year and the pandemic with as much forward momentum as possible. Perhaps compared to some of our peers, our focus has always been through, from a performance perspective, on making sure that 2021 and beyond had as much forward momentum rather than pure 2020. I think we've managed to achieve both of those goals.
It's not perfect, but I think we've made some really good steps on getting the efficiency of the business right. We certainly made some key steps in building relationships and supporting our stakeholders. We'll touch briefly on some of those pieces, but I won't repeat too much history so that we've got time for the go forward piece. There's quite a lot of data on some of these slides, and we've got a lot to cover, so I will just pick out individual pieces. I do want to pick out the eight- week Would You Recommend score. That's for the year 2020 as a whole, but it will be a very similar number for the customer care year that ended in 2020, where the results will be announced shortly. It was good to see us getting comfortably back into five star status.
If I look at the most recent results, we're slightly above that level, so still sitting very comfortable five-star place. Similarly on the construction quality score, again, seeing progress on an issue that we have seen as key. Can we move on, please, Victoria? I think if I then stand back and look at the long-term environment, it still remains very favorable. It colored strongly our decisions on land investment from May onwards in our decision to raise capital, that our belief was that the underlying housing market would remain resilient. I don't think we called how quickly the housing market would recover, but we did call that it wasn't going to go south, and that actually, as we went into 2021 and beyond, we'd start to see a return to normality and positive normality from a house builder's point of view.
We've seen a lot of changes through the political environment in that period, but it still remains a top priority through the government. We've had good relationships through that COVID-19 crisis in terms of how the industry operates, and I think that has strengthened the industry's standing within government. We've never seen the end of the stamp duty holiday as a material risk. We talked about that in November, and I think you now see that coming through all of the external data, as we told you at the time. We heard obviously over the weekend about a possible 95% Guarantee Scheme, which would help not just new home builders, but also the general market.
I do see that as a much more sustainable underpin to the market than probably Help to Buy, and therefore I'm pleased to see that sort of not just coming on the agenda, but being mooted for a potentially short term announcement. We are conscious the industry needs to play its part. Quality is key. We've supported the New Homes Ombudsman and feel very ready to deal with the sorts of challenges that that presents, and I'll touch today on the cladding and fire safety decisions that we've already taken and announced then today.
Also an issue that is clearly key to our customers, key to the overall ESG agenda for all businesses, and for a business that actually prides itself on its social consciousness and its approach to all of its stakeholders, we are pleased to see our climate change and environmental strategy out there over the course of the last week. I think from a financial investment point of view, that sense of a medium term housing market that should continue to be supported because of supply and demand, because of low interest rates, but with a government that is actually supportive of first time buyers who are the key to the market, but the one part of the market that really do struggle with making that first step. I'm going to skip land market here because I'll pick it up on some more detailed slides later.
Victoria, can we move on, please? As I look at our priorities today, they still reflect quite a lot of what we would have said without the pandemic a year ago, but have moved on. Our focus is on margin delivery. We still see that 21%-22% delivery as being reasonable and realistic as an underlying kind of margin delivery over the medium term. Sort of it's come nearer to term, and we're able to set out to you today a lot of the steps to get there. The optimization of selling prices and a really strong view on costs are definitely the key steps. Bringing through new land acquisitions that we've made over the course of the last eight or nine months for volume growth in 2023 and 2024, which I will update you on.
Customer service and the ESG agenda overall, but also particularly our environmental strategy. Can we move on, please? I've got a couple of slides on land. This first slide tells you things you're already aware of. We made significant new approvals last year, about GBP 1.3 billion of gross land purchases, more weighted towards more small sites. I'm going to point you to one word just because I think it's important as you look at the structure of the land bank and the structure of the business. We've said through the course of the last few months that we expected the short-term land bank to grow by 10,000 plots.
I've added the word over, and that's partly because of the mix of sites as we bring in some of our normal strategic sites, but also we've continued to be active and successful in the land market over the last two or three months. I think that perspective has continued to grow. I would expect same timeframe for that growth to be greater than 10,000 plots. That's a combination of the money from the capital raise and money we would have invested sort of anyway, but really seeing good opportunities. Land market has started to tighten now and get back to normality with pretty much all competitors being active, but we are very pleased with the headway that we've made while it's been much more muted. Can we move on, please?
I think this slide is key, and this takes that land progression that you'd already seen in our year-end trading update forward to the next couple of months. I wouldn't normally show you this level of detail on the first couple of months. It wouldn't normally be relevant because there's so much activity, and because we've seen momentum from last year cover it, kind of continue into January and February. I think it's important to understand it. As of this weekend, we secured about 30,000 new plots, just over 30,000 new plots since the time of the capital raise, 106 sites. You'll see, and I touched on it a second ago, you'll see that the average site size has risen slightly because some of those sites are more normal strategic land purchases.
Most importantly of all, and this was always a risk that sort of we've been watching and it's good to see that we're through that risk period without it materializing. We've seen those progress into contract exchanges sort of very effectively through December and particularly January and February. We are now, as you can see, exchanged on about two-thirds of those 30,000 plots, which is a faster rate than normal and obviously given the scale of activity and the potential for additional competition, that could have been a slower rate than normal. That gives a real resilience to that. Trying to then give you some insight into outlet openings and how those impact on outlet openings. We opened 89 outlets in 2019. I am pleased that we managed to open 73 last year.
I said we focused on where the business would exit 2020 rather than maximizing production through the balance of 2020. From day one when we went back on sites, we were pushing our teams to do the necessary work, both planning and infrastructure work to get outlets open. Our outlet numbers haven't dipped and you know, sort of we had a relatively normal level of openings. We have around 330 outlets for potential opening in the next three years. That's not a forecast. We would tend to lose some of those or at least get delays, but that's far higher than we would normally see. About 30% of those are from the new approvals since the capital raise and are broadly spread across all three years, with 90% of those post-capital raise acquisitions expected to be open by the end of 2023.
I go back to, we said we would see those outlets opening from late 2022 through 2023 and that it would add to volumes in 2023 and 2024. Despite the fact that I would say the planning system is starting to slow down because we've made more headway on the number of acquisitions than we set out at the time of the capital raise, we feel, sort of that strongly underpins that direction. I still think there is risk on planning, but having more choices and more sites to bring forward gives you the strongest possible defense that you can have against that. Can we move forward, please? Spending a bit of time on ESG. I think we are seen as, and to a certain extent we see ourselves as, very good at the social and governance parts of ESG.
I've used some examples here through the pandemic, the Pay It Forward scheme, the care home initiative with PPE and support for 50 care homes in May, when really others were not really yet seeing that as an issue. The care worker discount, you'll see in the statement, the total cost split over 2020 and 2021 of the care worker discount was about GBP 46 million. It's a significant investment, that's sort of a real discount. Also on governance, we have a gender diverse board and executive team. These are issues that we have focused on over a long time, but I think we've been quiet about our environmental focus. I've listed a few things here that we've already been doing through 2019 and 2020. Sustainability champions in each of our regional businesses, 97% of our construction waste recycled.
I'm not going to list them all. I think we have been conscious and we had planned to launch our environmental strategy this time last year. We decided with the pandemic and also with the Future Homes Standard still being uncertain, that it was right to delay it. We launched it last week. I just wanted to spend a little time on that today. If we can move forward to that slide, please. I think the thing people will focus on most, is a new science-based carbon reduction target. We've already achieved some significant efficiencies. We're setting out for a reduction our operational carbon emissions of 36% by 2025. Our sort of Scope 3 carbon emissions of the supply chain and customer homes by 2030. We do have shorter term targets for clear improvements.
I think we also have targets on nature and resources and waste, and we see those three areas for our house builder and for our community and customer relations be the key areas that we need to and should focus on. We've got those short term and long term targets on those issues as well. If we can move forward. I'm just going to wrap up talking about the cladding and fire safety decisions that we have made and the provision that we have made today. You'll recognize this is a very complex area, and I'm not going to go into it in lots of detail. I'm very happy to take questions. I'm very happy if anybody wants to spend some time with myself or Chris, who is an absolute expert on the subject, sort of after the call.
Essentially, what we are trying to do today is fill in the gaps around the government scheme. We think now is the right time because we have updated RICS Guidance. We have a clear desire from most of the key parties to get their arms around it and understand what the scope is. We have seen significant increases in scope over the last 18 months. The bulk of this provision relates actually to buildings under 18 meters, which I think we now have to consider in scope and effectively enables us to say that we will pay the main cost, the investment cost, to bring those buildings up to EWS1, which is the RICS Standard on fire safety today.
We're not prepared to sign a blank check, we do think it is right, both morally and reputationally, to make sure that our customers have the key large parts of that bill covered, and most importantly, that that work happens. As I say, we could spend a long time talking about it. We are confident that this is enough to cover the issue unless there was a massive change in scope. We've calculated it quite cautiously to make sure that we can make that commitment to our customers and not have to keep moving. I will now hand over to Jennie for the operational review.
Thanks, Pete. Good morning, all. This morning I'll take you through the U.K. operational overview for 2020 with a summary of market performance, an update on some of our procurement activities, an introduction to our new house type range, and a look at operational outcomes for the year. During 2020, we continued our focus on further embedding and leveraging our strategic objectives of cost discipline and process simplification through all areas of the business. As I go through the slides, I'll highlight some of that activity for you. Sorry, if I could just go back. The U.K. housing market remained resilient despite the shutdown period in the second quarter of 2020. We continued to prioritize opening new outlets, opening 73 in the year. We traded on an average of 240 outlets and entered 2021 with 239 outlets.
The net private reservation rate for the year was 0.76, despite constrained build capacity and remote sales. Average selling prices on private completions increased to GBP 320,000, and the overall average selling price increased to GBP 288,000, driven mostly by change of mix. Cancellation rates for the full year were above normal levels at 20%, but did normalize in the final quarter at around 16%. With demand for our homes remaining strong, we ended the year 50% forward sold for 2021. As at week commencing the 21st of February, we had an order book of just over 11,000 homes. Our order book includes a healthy profile of sales extending into the second quarter and beyond the stamp duty holiday, and when the next phase of Help to Buy is due to commence. During 2020, approximately 46% of total sales in the U.K. used the Help to Buy scheme.
The new Help to Buy scheme opened on the 16th of December for reservations for completions from April 2021. As at the week commencing the 21st of February, we had taken approximately 1,100 net reservations. During 2020, our sales and marketing teams responded well to the challenging lockdown environment, including remote selling and transitioning sales centers to visitors on an appointment-only basis. Our website and the retention throughout lockdown of sales teams with specific development site knowledge ensured we established a solid pipeline of customer interest, which, as sale centers and show homes reopened, ensured we were well-placed as the market recovered strongly in the second half. The 2021 selling season has started well, reflecting the underlying strength of demand, underpinned by low interest rates and stable mortgage lending. Given this good start and our strong order book, we are mindful of balancing sales rate against sales price.
Private net sales for the year to date is 0.89. Overall website traffic year to date continues at strong levels, up on 2020 and 2019. Leads and inquiry levels are also healthy, and our appointment book continues at high levels. Overall, a positive start to the year. Considerable progress and momentum has already been achieved within our procurement functions in terms of cost and efficiency, and we are well-placed to take these forward in our next phase of volume growth and the release of the new house type range. The cost and efficiency program involves multiple work streams that have introduced automated sourcing and tendering processes, enhanced forecasting tools, workflow and system improvements targeting efficiencies. These actions are already delivering savings with further benefits expected in the year.
During the period of site closure, we communicated transparently with our suppliers and subcontractors on a weekly basis and continued to do so through the various stages of subsequent national and local restrictions. All this has served to strengthen Taylor Wimpey's relationships with its partners and the attractiveness of working with us in the future. With a divisional hat on, whilst there has been some friction in parts of the supply chain during remobilization, the investment in those relationships has tangible benefits, including an ease of resolution of supply chain issues and subcontractor loyalty to working on Taylor Wimpey sites. Throughout 2020, not surprisingly, a significant area of focus was on Brexit planning and mitigation and coordinating material supplies to support site remobilization. To date, we've seen little direct Brexit-related disruption, although this has, of course, been closely monitored.
We took the view fairly early on in the pandemic that the future sustainability of our build programs were reliant on the sustainability of our partners, particularly the predominantly self-employed subcontract base. As a result, we processed payments quickly and introduced the Pay It Forward scheme to help support those subcontractors feeling pressure in the initial stages of lockdown. Our approach to COVID-19 secure protocols enabled us to accommodate subsequent restrictions without meaningful disruption to production plans, thereby maintaining the continuity of work for our subcontractor base. The team priorities for 2021 continues to be a cost and efficiency focus, aiming to take cost out and further reduce SKU count as we improve standardization, support technical compliance, quality, and production efficiency. This work will also ensure the effective and efficient delivery of our new house type range, which I'll come onto in the next few slides.
At this stage, we anticipate overall build cost inflation in 2021 to be in the order of 2%-3%, marginally lower than in 2020, though subject to production levels and the strength of the housing market. Pete's challenged me not to take too long on these slides, but I'm very pleased this morning to be introducing you to our new house type range. The objective was to produce a customer-focused range of houses with great curb appeal and livability that provides the business with an efficient tool to buy land and gain planning consent while being simple, cost-effective, and safe to build. The range also, of course, contributes to the delivery of our purpose to build great homes and create thriving communities.
The three main drivers to bring forward a new house type range are changing our customer needs, the expected pace of change in planning and building regulations, including energy considerations, and of course, our own focus on enhancing business performance and efficiency. The range comprises a focused group of 28 new house types. As a result, the range itself will be more efficient to maintain. It's expected that the simplification of designs will decrease cost, increase build efficiency, reduce customer issues, and increase build quality. It all starts with land and land buying. Therefore, land efficiencies were carefully considered. The new range can achieve greater coverage by improved plotting efficiency and early consideration of parking arrangements. From a planning perspective, the range has been designed as a complementary set, allowing most houses to be used together to create characterful and harmonious street scenes.
There's a greater range of designed-in options, including roof form, window styles, GRP features, for example, which will allow greater flexibility, enabling us to respond to the design agenda for creating places but without losing cost control. The range will meet our customers' changing needs. We designed in light of detailed customer insight gathered over the last few years, including engagement with our customers about their homes during the pandemic. The brief included the features desired by customers, spaces that flow, a feeling of light and space, and opportunities for inside and outside living. The importance of suitable spaces to work and study in the home has never been better highlighted than by the pandemic.
We have therefore identified in all our homes, even the smallest in the range, at least one good quality study space that does not affect the other functionality of the home, utilizing liminal spaces to full advantage and planning in plenty of power sockets. With the kitchen being the prime living space in many of our homes today, removing laundry from the kitchen enhances its attractiveness and usability as a living space. This has been a feature, of course, of a number of our larger homes for a long time, but the new range extends this principle to all homes, no matter how small. The range has been designed to be cost-effective and efficient to build. It is more concise, less complex, and designed-in external options will ensure the less need for bespoke non-standard house types.
Supply chain has worked closely with the design team throughout to exploit opportunities for standardization and to reduce product complexity, as well as ensure that new components are fully sourced to ease the implementation phase. The range applies learning from the construction quality reviews and customer care feedback and will contribute to improved build quality and customer satisfaction. By way of example, bathrooms, which are both a design statement important to our customer and an area where we sometimes experience build quality issues, has been a focus. To exploit the first and address the second, we've standardized bathrooms throughout the range. The range is future-facing. It has been developed to be build method agnostic and is also capable of serving our businesses in Scotland and Wales. The simplicity of build, standardization of details and components, improved production information will help improve build quality and build time.
We've designed with the forthcoming changes in building regulations in mind, and we expect it to meet the standards of Part L and Part F, while also future-proofing the range based on available information for the Future Homes Standard in 2025. Finally, the electronic working drawing packages have been significantly improved, and the use of dynamic blocks mean we will quickly adapt elevations to suit individual site needs while working within standard design parameters, bringing resource efficiencies to busy design teams, reducing redrawing, and maximizing the use of those design components, without increasing design workload. Moving on then. The challenges of the year sharpened our focus and highlighted additional opportunities for operational improvements by leveraging a range of previous investments, including in IT, training, and development. The increased plotting of standard house types enabled increased material standardization with cost and efficiency benefits.
Quality managers, which were recruited across the business in 2019, are now working closely with production teams to review performance, address quality issues, and ease implementation of new processes. During my time in the division, their positive effect is evident in continually improving build quality, build efficiency, and increasing customer satisfaction. Previous IT investment enabled the continuing effectiveness of our remote and dispersed workforce, and delivered additionality by enabling our office and site teams to engage in training on a range of quality and skills-focused topics throughout lockdown and after.
We were able to quickly adapt our sales process, which is now digitized from reservation to completion, and we also launched the TW virtual public consultation platform, which enabled our local teams to continue to fulfill our commitment to community and stakeholder engagement throughout the restrictions and allowed our teams to continue to progress sites through planning and to outlet opening. Health and safety is our number one priority, and during 2020, we worked in partnership with our subcontractors to develop sustainable COVID-19 protocols. In accordance with our principles and responsible leadership, we gifted all of our COVID secure health and safety documentation to SMEs to support their safe remobilization. Despite the unusual nature of 2020, we've seen some significant improvements in our operational performance across a range of measures.
We continue to lead the volume house builders in build quality as measured by the NHBC CQR score. In 2020, we scored an average of 4.5 from a score of 6. This compares to an industry average of 4.32. We also continue to embed further our quality assurance processes, at every build stage. We are, as Pete mentioned earlier, particularly pleased that the customer feedback and recommend scores during and after lockdown continue to be very positive. For the survey year, we achieved 92% for the eight-week, a five-star customer rating, and 78% on the nine-month Would You Recommend scores.
Our consistent quality approach guidelines, which ensure site managers, subcontractors, production, and customer services all have a consistent understanding of the finishing standards we expect of our home, was rolled out on the 4th of January this year in a customer facing format, so it is clear for customers what they can expect from us. This is an important step in our preparations for the imminent launch of the New Homes Ombudsman. We are pleased that our annual injury incident rate has reduced further to 151, well below the HBF and the HSE averages. Finally from me this morning, it is very pleasing, particularly given the nature of the year, to have been recognized by our employees via Glassdoor for leadership during the pandemic, and to have once again secured a place in the top 50 places to work. Many thanks, and I'll now pass over to Chris.
Thanks, Jennie. Good morning, everyone. The 2020 results are in line with expectations with GBP 2.8 billion of revenue, GBP 300 million of operating profit, an operating profit margin of 10.8%. Profit before tax reduced to 1/3 of what was delivered in 2019, reflecting the financial impact of the lost volume and revenue resulting from the pandemic. We are, however, very confident in the business's ability to recover quickly, which is evidenced by the improvement in the financial performance in the second half of the year. We expect that improvement to continue in 2021. I'll come back to explain what's driving that on some of the later slides. The increase in tangible net asset value per share is of course, due to both the equity raise and the profits generated in the period.
Total U.K. volumes fell by 39% in 2020 as a result of the production delays associated with site closures in the second quarter. Increases in both the private and affordable average selling prices, along with a slightly lower mix of affordable units at 20% of the total, delivered a 7% increase in overall selling prices. The increase in private selling prices at 6% was principally driven by mix with slightly larger homes, slightly more weighted towards the south, and with an improved mix of site quality, so more from the grade A and B locations. There was also some underlying price inflation, which you'll see on the next slide. Looking forward, our guidance for 2021 volumes is unchanged at 85%-90% of 2019 levels, but with affordable making up about 17%.
The reduction in affordable is influenced both by the mix of sites and a revision to the way we contract land sold to housing associations, where revenue and profit will now be realized slightly later. There's no change to the overall cash or profit from those contracts, just timing of recognition. The change means we'll report about 350 fewer affordable completions in 2021 than we otherwise would have done. The affordable mix from 2022 is expected to return to around 20%. The output from our joint ventures, both in terms of completions and profit, was very similar year-over-year. We expect that to reduce in 2021 before picking up again in 2022. Now, this is the usual slide we present every six months to show the main elements of the movement in U.K. operating margin year-over-year.
I'm not going to go into the detail of the reconciliation, but I do think an understanding of the movements in 2020 is helpful in appreciating some of the drivers for margin recovery in 2021. The first colored box includes costs that won't repeat in 2021, such as the GBP 63 million of COVID costs and the GBP 12 million of restructuring costs. You should expect to see those reversing on this slide next year. The second box includes the impact of the volume reduction, and as volumes increase in 2021, the efficiency of fixed cost recovery will improve, and most of those elements will also reverse.
In addition to the reversal of 2020 costs and the increase in volumes, there are other factors supporting the margin improvement in 2021 and they include the GBP 16 million of savings from the restructuring we undertook at the end of last year, together with our increased focus in 2020 on the balance between price and sales rate, which will unwind from the order book into the income statement in 2021. I expect you to be even more interested in the medium-term outlook for margin, which is on the next slide. As you have heard very consistently in all of our recent updates, Pete, Jennie and I are all confident in the business's ability to achieve our medium-term operating margin target of 21%-22%, assuming market conditions remain stable. This slide is intended to provide clarity on where our collective confidence comes from.
To aid comparison from the previous iteration of the slide and to reflect our normal volume delivery, I have started from the 2019 operating margin of 19.6%. You may recall that Pete first presented this slide 12 months ago when the range of outcomes was 21%-22.5%. What's changed since then? Well, as we all know, quite a lot. We've undertaken the equity raise, which means our medium-term volume growth expectations are higher. We've also undertaken a more significant cost restructuring exercise than we would have anticipated, removing one tier of operational management, rationalizing our London structure, and a series of other overhead reductions across the business. The higher volumes and the efficiency savings have shifted the potential range a bit higher and support our confidence in achieving the medium term 21%-22% target.
We're also a fairly cautious bunch, and although we've been buying land within the 21%-22% range and making allowances for the latest changes to Part L and F of the Building Regs, we've adjusted the land bank evolution target down very slightly to reflect the risks associated with those changes. Jennie's already covered the new house type range and procurement opportunities it brings, and I'll cover the benefits of our new CRM system on the next slide. One very important point to note, however, before I leave this slide, is that this bridge does not yet reflect the impact of the government's Building Safety Levy or its U.K. Residential Property Developer Tax and we're expecting more details on both of those at tomorrow's budget. The outcome of that, of course, may require us to make adjustments to these numbers.
Now, as you know, we've been investing in the business over recent years and now volumes are recovering. We're starting to see some return from that investment and one example is our new customer relationship management system that we are currently rolling out throughout the business. The system spans the whole of the customer journey from the initial marketing and contact through sales and legal processes all the way through to aftercare. I'll quickly touch on three of the areas where we think the system can drive value for us. Firstly, the system gives us much better visibility of exactly which media channels deliver the leads that convert to sales, and as a consequence, we can optimize our media mix by using the most effective channels and reducing spend in the others.
For example, in the year to date, our web traffic is up 9% on 20% less media spend. The system also registers customer interactions, whether that is their use of the website, a call, a visit, when they open one of our emails, or when they download a brochure. Not only does that mean we have a very good idea of what they're looking for before they call us or visit us, but it also allows us to prioritize those customers who are closer to market. Lastly, the data allows our sales executives to filter customers interested in particular development by the number of bedrooms they're looking for, the price they can afford, and their financial status, such as if they already have a mortgage approved in principle.
That very quickly creates a prospect pool of customers for each individual plot, which can be prioritized on their financial position. For example, a cash buyer who doesn't need an incentive or a discount would typically be the most profitable type of lead and the quickest to progress to completion. In summary, the investment in this system brings significant improvements to our processes in these areas. It will allow us to be more efficient in how we work, reduce complexity and cost, and also help us to maximize our sales both in terms of volume and price. All of that will support the margin as we go forward. You can see that across land, WIP and land creditors, there's been a net investment of GBP 392 million over the course of 2020.
That is a mixture of new land investment coming onto the balance sheet following the equity raise, continuing investment in opening new outlets, as Pete mentioned, and the delay of Q4 completions into 2021. The provision we announced today to help resolve fire safety risks for leaseholders in our apartment buildings that aren't covered by the government fund will be booked in 2021. It is not included in this balance sheet. I anticipate the cash spend from that provision to be spread over a number of years because of the complexity of the technical assessments that need to be undertaken on a building-by-building basis. As such, we don't expect it to have any impact on the ordinary dividend or a material impact on any excess capital returns.
We certainly won't be dragging our feet on this, but the reality is that there just aren't sufficient chartered fire engineers with professional indemnity insurance to contend with the number of assessments that are required. Even when taking that 2021 provision into account, you can see that we have a strong balance sheet, which is primed for further investment in land as the deals that we've agreed since the equity raise continue to work their way through into the numbers. Again, on the cash flow, you can see that net investment in land and WIP, which was evident in the balance sheet. The other significant outflow in the period is tax, where, due to the change in the corporation tax regime, we made six payments in 2020, two final installment payments relating to 2019, and four payments in 2020, representing all of 2020's tax liability.
Today, as expected, we have announced the resumption of our ordinary dividend in line with our existing ordinary dividend policy of paying approximately 7.5% of net assets. This will commence with the final dividend for 2020 of GBP 151 million, or GBP 0.0414 per share, which will be paid in May, subject to approval at the AGM. As previously communicated, we are not proposing to return excess capital in 2021. We expect to review the excess capital generated in 2021 at the time of the 2021 full year results in February 2022, for payment in July 2022. The method of returning that capital, either by way of special dividend or share buyback, will be kept under regular review. Our previous practice has been to announce special dividends at the half year results, one year in advance of their payment the following July.
This change to announcing excess capital returns in February fits better into the communication timeline and shouldn't change the timing or quantum of any potential return. Looking forward to 2021, as I said earlier, our U.K. volume guidance is unchanged at between 85%-90% of 2019 volumes. We expect the affordable mix to be lower at 17%, getting back up to around 20% in 2022. Based on current market conditions continuing for the balance of the year, we are expecting to deliver an operating margin in 2021 of between 18.5% and 19%. The main factors contributing to that margin growth year-over-year are the absence of COVID and restructuring costs, the increase in volumes, the benefits of cost efficiencies, and a greater focus on price over sales rate.
At this stage, forecasting year-end net cash is quite tricky due to the variability and timing of land spend, and obviously, that's going to be a bigger number than normal this year due to the deals we've approved and contracted over recent months. The GBP 500 million guidance is provided in that context, and obviously, we'll give you an update on that when we get to the half year. In summary, we started the year with a strong order book and WIP position. The completions that were delayed from Q4 last year are flowing through nicely, meaning that we're tracking ahead of where we were at this time last year.
The margin is recovering well, we have secured a lot of high quality land over the course of the last eight months, which will drive our growth in 2023 and underpin our ability to get back to that 21%-22% operating margin target. I'll hand over to Pete.
Thanks, Chris. I finally worked out how to move my slides on now, which with one slide to go isn't particularly useful. I promise we're nearly done, and then we can open up for questions. I'm not going to repeat what Chris said. It's a positive environment. I think we've got confidence about 2021. I do think that selling price movement, which isn't about 2021 results predominantly because of how far ahead we are sold, but it's good to see that sort of come through. We could see underlying prices moving last year, but we've seen a meaningful step up January and February. Good that cost inflation remains more benign.
As I said, sort of in our previous call, I think, on a relative basis, we feel probably in a stronger place having had a challenging 2019 on costs and a lot of the work that Jennie and Chris are highlighting and working on just gives us more sense of our control over those overall dynamics. Yeah, I think the land dynamics, as I touched on, definitely returning to normal. We are slightly concerned about the activity of planning offices and local authorities through the lockdown who are just not able to sustain the same activity that we would expect to see. We have a lot more choices of outlets coming through than we have had over the recent years, and that we think the sector generally has. That puts us, I think, in a good place and strengthens our position.
I think we are conscious that there have been a lot of change over the last couple of years, we do expect later in the year to bring together all the different threads of strategy. Not a relaunch of strategy, just kind of setting it out for you very clearly. Just to be clear, we don't expect that to change our views on operating margin targets, growth related to the capital raise, or ordinary or special dividends. It's good to announce the return to ordinary dividends and to sort of be looking forward to special dividends next year. If we can open it up for questions, please.
Yes, sir. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll now begin the question and answer session. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question over the phone, just press star and one on your telephone keypad. We have a couple of questions that came through. Your first question comes from the line of Aynsley Lammin. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
All right. Thanks. Morning. Just two from me, actually. First of all, just wondered if you could remind us of your definition of excess capital when we start to think about what the special dividend might be. Obviously, the ordinary, you've reverted back to what it was before, just a bit more information on the special. Secondly, just on the kind of, I guess, a bit more color on the level of friction you're still seeing or not seeing on site in terms of materials availability, labor availability, the build rates. To get to 85%-90%, is it just the site numbers that's the kind of constraint rather than any friction on site due to the pandemic or potential material shortages in certain areas? Any color on that would be great. Thanks.
Thanks, Aynsley. I think one for Chris on the capital and one for Jennie on the friction on site.
Yeah. Aynsley, our policy is unchanged. It's return capital in excess of that needed by the group to fund land investment or working capital, taxation, and other cash requirements of the business. Obviously, after the ordinary dividend has been met. Obviously, the significant moving parts in that over the next couple of years as the land comes onto the balance sheet and we then start to invest into WIP on the new outlets. Yeah, no change at all in the policy.
Jennie, on the friction.
Okay, just picking up on that friction point. Hi. Yes, just picking up on that point. In terms of materials, we did quite a lot of work through site remobilization with our supply chain. Whilst there have been some issues, they've been readily managed by both the local and the central procurement teams. Labor availability has remained good. We can see some tensions, particularly just in these last weeks now heading to the end of stamp duty and Help to Buy around labor availability, it hasn't been affecting our build rates which are now at near normal levels.
Thanks, Jennie. I'm not going to sort of add on lots of bits to the answers, but I do think that you can see in our level of WIP at the end of the year, that we didn't finish the end of the year sort of having strange WIP completion over the line. Overall, I think our build teams are at in a slightly better than usual position rather than a worse one, which obviously impacts on that last piece. Next question, please.
Thank you.
Yes, sir. The next question comes from the line of Will Jones. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. Three, if I could, please. Sorry, there might be a couple of sub parts to one or two, but the first is around volumes. If we look at the land bank size at the end of the year and your comment that the net size should grow by over 10,000 over the next while, and we ally that with your land bank length target of four to four and a half length. Clearly, it's very simple math, but it might imply somewhere around the 20,000 mark or maybe even slightly higher. Is that fair? I suppose, how would you look at that in the context of your capacity? I think you've talked in the past about if you went beyond 18, you'd need to open new divisions. Just to square in that circle, as it were.
The second is just around house price inflation. The 3% number year to date, obviously pretty positive, but also quite surprising. I mean, big picture, do you think that's an industry trend, or do you think you're doing some stuff more specific to Taylor Wimpey around there? Is there any catch-up in there? I guess, would you be drawn on what the average effect might be for the 2021 P&L? Because obviously, there are some quite major timing issues going on here. The last one is more of a conceptual point, but obviously the industry is going to be facing quite a significantly higher tax burden over the next few years from cladding and the corporation tax in all likelihood. I mean, land buying in the past has always been done on a pre-tax basis. Do you think it will continue to be done that way?
Is there any scope, do you think, for the industry to think about the post-tax basis and try and recoup some of that effect through your land acquisitions? Thanks.
Thanks, Will Jones. I'm sort of disappointed. I was hoping to farm off most of the questions, but I think I need to have a stab myself at most of those. The volumes related to land bank length, I mean, we said at the point of the capital raise, we expected about 10,000 plots directly related to that capital and that sort of leading to about 2,000 units a year, sort of getting to a sort of full run rate in 2024, but seeing some signs of it in 2023. That hasn't changed, but we are also investing additional capital ourselves. I think we have to be slightly careful because I touched on a couple of times the fact that, in those 31,000 are a couple of particularly big strategic land sites.
They weren't significant in the sort of initial capital raise numbers to the end of the year, but there's one in particular that just pushes those numbers up, and that doesn't affect the balance sheet because it's paid for over a long period of time. It does affect the land bank length. You do have to slightly adjust. When I said we would come back later in the year and just sort of wrap things up for you and update you, I think that includes particularly the land bank length piece. We're not saying that we need to hold a lot more paid for land, but that balance of strategic sites. I've said multiple times, we still like large sites. We still think they have a value. We still think they underpin the business, but we like a mix.
The one part of the target structure we set out in 2018 that we want to really look at and think about with the changing land environment, that additional investment is that land bank length. I don't think it's going to change massively, but it's probably going to push to the upper end of that range. I think particularly as we go through a change in the planning system over the next couple of years, if government pushing up that, although there might be upside at the end of it, we sort of take a cautious approach on the way through that any change tends to bring disruption. We certainly wouldn't want to be cutting it fine. It's the only one. I think we're absolutely committed to the 2,000 additional kind of completions a year.
Over and above that, there may well be potential, but that's something we'll update you on as we get further into those land deals and into that planning system. On the selling price movements, is it an industry change? Really hard to know, isn't it? We feel we've done well. You always feel you've done well on things like that. I think we can see a meaningful change. We did set out as we did last year with the goal of seeing that. There is a little bit in there that is the reversal of the care worker discount, as I touched on earlier. That was a real discount, and it probably had a 1% impact on the average reservation selling price last year. That discount on reservations finished at the end of last year, which was what we always planned.
It's not completely offsetting there, but that's probably the one meaningful change. I do think it's a real movement. Impact this year, it isn't massive because as I say, very well forward sold. It's right at the back end of the year, and it's embodied in our kind of overall view of guidance. We've got to absorb cost movements as well. We're flagging inflation on the build cost side at 2%-3%, more benign, but we've still got to absorb that. It's really hard to split it all out. As I say, I think we see that impact included in our upgraded guidance, but it's a whole mix of small moving parts.
I will give Jennie a chance to comment on the tax burden, but I would say at this point, it's really hard to know because a lot of it depends on state of the land market as to whether it's passed back to land and how it's structured, more likely to be structured into land if it's not structured as a tax per se, but as a contribution that goes through viability. Even then, it depends how challenging the land market is. Jennie?
Yeah, I think that we're seeing that the land market is starting to price in the Part L and Part F costs now, and that is driving some sites to sort of clear viability strain, particularly in the northern businesses. Whilst I think there is some opportunities to look to land, I don't think it's going to be the answer across the market.
Yeah. I think, well, this is not just about the tax, it's about the Part L, Part F costs and margins generally and selling prices. Yeah, I don't know if you remember, the slide that Chris used as sort of a bridge to forward-looking margins, which as he said, I first used last year. At the point that I first used it, we specifically commented that the one thing that we really had to sort of take under advisement and not sort of specifically account for was the Part L and Part F costs. We're not saying that today, by which I mean, we know what the regulation is and when it comes in. We've factored that in. Some of it is in land, some of it is not. That is a cost that we're then offsetting with those selling price movements.
Whereas before, we were flagging it as a future risk rather than something that was kind of factored in.
Understood. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Glynis Johnson. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Morning. I have, I think two for Chris and one for Jennie, so Pete, I think you get left off the hook on this one. The first one, just in terms of build WIP. I wonder if you could just give some sort of color on where you see the necessary build WIP that you need in terms of build it, deliver it units as you go into a year or relative to forward sales to allow us to judge what kind of investment you may need to make through the year. Second one in terms of just if you could just clarify, for me the vision on working group pace , how much of the land that's been approved is already on the balance sheet? What will be the cash rate for land this year, and where will be at some tail end as we go into 2022?
Just in terms of the housing types, can you just give us a little bit of background, how many housing types did you have before, so we could put where you're going into some sort of perspective? How long have you been planning this? Have they been tested, or is this an evolution? Just a little bit more color.
If I take, I think I didn't quite hear the third of those questions, Glynis, but if I have a good crack at the builds and the build WIP and the land. We came into 2021 with GBP 1.66 billion of WIP reflecting sort of continued investment in opening new outlets during 2020, as Pete said. Obviously, the delay of Q4 completions into 2021. I'm actually expecting WIP to be broadly stable in 2021. Some of the sort of 2020 overhang that I think you're referring to will work its way out, be replaced by investment in new outlets. It's not going to go back to the sort of GBP 1.46 billion level you saw at the end of 2019, because we want to grow the volumes and at the same time hang on to that smoother profile of completion.
In terms of the land, at the year end, we had agreed terms on GBP 3 billion of land since the equity raise. That run rate obviously more than accounts for a level of normal activity, plus the incremental investment from the equity raise itself. If you were sort of roughly breaking that down at the year end, there was probably about GBP 250 million of that that was cash spend, about GBP 150 million in land creditors, GBP 300 million that was conditionally exchanged, and the balance that was then still to exchange.
It's a gradual process, isn't it, to see that land come through onto the balance sheet. You do see it, so the land balance at the end of 2020 was GBP 2.9 billion, which was up from GBP 2.7 billion at the end of 2019. By the end of January, it was up to GBP 3 billion. I think in terms of the question on sort of land spend levels for this year, clearly, that dynamic sort of gives you an idea that the GBP 646 million, which was our cash land spend in 2020, it's going to be considerably more than that. It'll be over GBP 1 billion in 2021. I'm sorry, my line wasn't that great on the third question.
Yeah. I think I've got that one, Chris. I've heard you correctly, Glynis, sort of interested in the new house type range, how many we've had in the past, how we've tested it through, and I think evolution, and if I've got any of those wrong, catch me. We've been taking incremental steps sort of in preparation for the delivery of a new house type range for some time. Back in sort of 2016, we had quite a large house type range. We were achieving about 65% plotting of the standard house type range. We reduced the number in 2018 to what we call the consolidated range of about 47 house types. Those have been plotting really quite well. The businesses have been moving increasingly to standardization.
As you'll have picked up from my slides, we're at about 86% of houses now being plotted from that standard range. This is the sort of the next evolutionary step, really in tightening up the range even further. We've been working on it for quite a number of years. Our customer engagement and customer insights have been running sort of annually over a four-year period. We stepped that up through last year, particularly engaging with our customers during the pandemic and sort of the livability of their homes during that time. We've got quite a lot of information to support sort of the customer sort of desire points. Costing has been tested quite rigorously through the business.
We've utilized some of those new systems that we talked about from our procurement and commercial teams, the BoQ system, and I think we're quite confident now on cost and cost-based. We're running some prototypes, so they are in build at the moment, and we would expect those to be coming up for completion towards the midpoint in the year. The plans are being released to the business pretty much as we speak. We expect the first plotting from a planning perspective by mid-year, first completions to be coming out first half of next year. Unusually, because of the Part L and Part F, we are likely to see a boost in the uptake of the new house type range. It's likely to land in an accelerated format compared to what we would normally see through land bank evolution.
I'd expect to see some meaningful numbers by the end of 2023.
Thanks, Glynis.
Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Gavin. Gavin, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
We can't hear you, Gavin, unless if you think we can.
I think Gavin has withdrawn the question, sir. The next one comes from Clyde Lewis. The line is now open. Please go ahead.
Good morning, all. Apologies. I missed the very start. I wasn't sure if you made any comments about the possible MIGS product that we might be getting from the government. I was wondering, Pete, what your initial views on that are and how that, I suppose, might sort of start to sort of change your thinking a little bit, whether it's on sort of, I suppose, product type and sort of affordability issues, I suppose, around that. The second one I had was on your planning comments, I suppose. You flagged again to the lockdown issues and pressures with regards to council availability on planning, and I'm just wondering whether you've seen anything improve on that front or whether it's still getting worse. I suppose, how you think that might play through for 2021.
The last one I had was around, I suppose, regional differences. I'm thinking in particular around London. London has clearly sort of been on a very different sort of path to a lot of the other regions around the U.K. I'm just wondering what you've seen over the last six months in particular?
Yep. No, thanks, and morning, Clyde. I'll pick up the first and the last, and Jennie, I'll leave the planning availability one to you. I think we did touch briefly on the Mortgage Guarantee Scheme possibility, but not in lots of detail, Clyde. I think, I've said many times on these calls that I always worry about the scale of Help to Buy and its sustainability and so, it's why we've never lobbied for it to be grown or massively extended. To me, I see, sort of the main benefit of a Mortgage Guarantee Scheme is that it just helps smooth out that sort of cliff edge risk in 2023. I mean, we were sanguine about the first stage of change to Help to Buy that we're kind of now largely through.
I think, sort of the current performance would tend to show we were right to be, but I've never been sanguine about its complete removal. If we have a less deep but broader Mortgage Guarantee Scheme that isn't just new build, is the second-hand market, I see that as a healthy help to the sector. It's been uncomfortable over the last few years to see the low transaction volumes in the second-hand market. I'm not at all concerned that any help to the second-hand market makes our job easier. I'm more interested in the overall sustainability, sort of resilience of the market as a whole, and that includes second-hand.
I think, assuming it happens and that it's broadly rational and big enough to cover sort of enough lenders and offer enough standard enough products to enough home buyers, I think it's a meaningful positive in helping manage that risk, and it probably helps the underlying resilience of the market through sort of the next 12 months or so as well. Positive. No scheme is perfect. They never are. There'll always be people who don't like them, but to me, it's a far more sort of sustainable potential scheme than Help to Buy necessarily sort of has been. On regional differences, I don't think we see major regional differences. All the sort of trends, the broad ones I talked about, the slightly more detailed ones that Jennie talked about, they apply pretty much everywhere.
There are, and we've touched on it through the last nine months, there have been some slightly different dynamics in London. Perhaps a slightly sort of bigger weighting of people who are looking outside London, certainly the pandemic has helped to get the top. I mean our top end of the market rather than the top end of the market as a whole, moving a bit more fluidly as the second-hand market moved, particularly during last year rather than in the last two or three months. The planning changes are probably more acute in London than elsewhere. That aside, I think our comments apply to pretty much all of the regions that we operate in, and even in London, albeit maybe to a different level. Jennie, the planning availability question.
I think I'll probably take that in two parts and split out the sort of strategic development plan processes versus the sort of development management planning applications running. We have seen a slowdown in local authorities determining planning applications. Less around details, so reserved matters, condition discharge tend to be running pretty well. More large scale, in principle decisions have undoubtedly been slowed down and the appeal system is running considerably slower than it has done in previous years, particularly after some improvements in 2019. I think it's probably very important to recognize that actually there are some authorities that are performing extremely well in these circumstances, and we had, for example, one of the largest and first virtual planning determinations in our London business at Coronation Square.
It's a bit of a mixed bag, and we are seeing some authorities performing extremely well, even under some difficult circumstances. The development plan system is probably more concerning, as Pete mentioned, the white paper. Lots to be positive about within the white paper, but inherently tends to slow down local authority decision making. If they are constrained with resources, they tend to divert them elsewhere while they're waiting for those uncertainties to slow down. We've seen a combination of the white paper and the changes in the standard methodology meaningfully slowing down the development plan process. Whilst that's not going to have an immediate effect in the very short term, certainly by the outlook of sort of years two and three, that could have an impact on the amount of approved land coming through the system. Thanks, Pete.
No, thank you. Thanks, Clyde. I do go back to when you look at the outcome of that, it doesn't cause us to change any of our kind of comments or guidance and particularly related to the equity raise. It does cause us to be pleased to have not just the equity raise related sites, but the high level of underlying land buying to give us more choices. It's why I focused on those January, February sort of progress because often bringing land on balance sheet is tied to the planning process. Seeing that still running at pace even with that sort of backdrop is important. Our focus from May onwards on this was, it felt inevitable that the overall sector outlets would drop. Although the drop in completions in 2020 is uncomfortable, that's a short-term thing.
Once your outlets start to drop, it gets harder and harder to get it back. Having the choices to bring them through to underpin the next few months so we have stability. We flagged sort of in January we probably see the outlets dip slightly. That hasn't happened yet. I'd still flag today we see outlets sort of drop to a slightly lower point during this year, but not much, and that then they can start to build again. That I think is a far better place than we would have been without that active land buying sort of process.
Thank you. The next question comes from Gregor Kuglitsch. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. A few questions. Just maybe, obviously, I guess maybe it's a very short-term question, but your best guess, what you think the levy will be for cladding. Do you think it's essentially going to be 3% or 4% of kind of effective corporation tax? I appreciate the accounting is a bit unclear whether it'll be in operating profit or in tax, but is that roughly what you're expecting into tomorrow? The second question is on your, I think you've now spelled out specific 2023 targets, and they also include the margins unchanged, 2021, 2022, you said before, but you're also adding return on net assets, I think 35%, which, according to my spreadsheet at least, would be an all-time high. I don't think you've ever achieved 35%.
If you just flesh out perhaps your conviction around that side, Well, in my mind, that's a very bullish statement. Maybe one briefly on trading year to date. If you just remind us or maybe give us some color, what's the mix of Help to Buy in the reservations that you're taking or have taken in the last couple of months? I assume, I appreciate there's a technical extension, but in reality, I guess you're only selling on the new scheme, right? Is it down kind of half to what it used to be? Maybe just some color would be helpful. Thank you.
Yeah. On the cladding tax, Gregor, I don't think we know anything that you don't know yourself. We haven't particularly engaged with government on it because it didn't seem necessary or particularly helpful. I think we're clear that we're meeting the vast majority of the direct costs, and we would hope that that and others in the industry have made various different steps as well, and I suspect will continue to, and we think may end up with where we are today being the end game for most. We will see. That may actually affect the sort of the final conclusions. We don't have a number any more than you do. The speculation that you saw around sort of the announcement on, I think, the 10th of February is the best guess that we have as well.
I think on the sort of return on capital, it's a very fair question. We have focused sort of in how we have described our immediate targets and plans very much on the sort of operating margin target. That obviously underpins the return on capital. It will be something that we'll be reviewing in more detail. I don't expect it to change by much our acquisitions, and we quoted the sort of return on capital on acquisition over the course of sort of the last nine months, and you've seen it's about 33%, 34%. The sort of the range might be 30%-35%.
You might be right that 35% as an absolute target might be ambitious, but it's not fundamentally different from that, and we still believe we can get both back to the 30%s, which is where we did peak, and stay there, which I think we think is what's important. Chris, are you comfortable to pick up the mix of Help to Buy question?
Yeah, of course. Just to add to that, Gregor, remember that in 2018, when our margin was 21.6%, the return on net operating assets was 33.4%. I think that's the peak. It was in that context. Yeah, in terms of Help to Buy, as we noted in January, we took 650 reservations on the new Help to Buy scheme in December. Since then, we've taken a further 452 sales on that scheme in the first seven weeks of the year, and I think that is just over 30% of year to date net sales.
Thank you very much indeed. Thank you.
Thanks, Gregor.
Thank you. The next one. Yes, sir. Thank you. The next question comes from Shane Carberry. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Morning, all. It's just one left for me, if that's okay. Just looking for a little bit more color around cost. I think, Pete, you were saying, it's been a bit more of a benign backdrop than you originally expected, which, look, is quite comforting given kind of what some other kind of building materials players have noted in regards to inflation running ahead of expectations. A little bit more color on that would be helpful. If you wouldn't mind also just kind of touching on maybe the availability of labor as well, and I know Jennie mentioned kind of the word loyalty when talking about the kind of subcontractor base given the likes of the Pay It Forward scheme, et cetera, which I guess a lot of the smaller players wouldn't have been able to do through COVID.
Just how that's kind of impacted on the availability for labor for you would be great.
Yeah. No, I think on sort of material costs, we stand by the sort of 2%-3%. I think the reason being you always have to be slightly careful because you always have to be very specific about what time period we're talking about. We're talking about the movement in the average cost of material on the 1st of January through to the average cost of material on the 31st of December in any period. You don't always see exactly that number come through the P&L because of lag factors and regulatory changes. That underlying inflationary cost, we see at 2%-3%, which is sort of below where we'd been running. We were running at, I think, 4%-5% in 2019, which was the peak year. Yes, you see pressure and you pick that up from building material suppliers on certain commodities.
Certainly, we saw pressure backend of last year, very early this year on timber, which I don't think surprises anybody given overall kind of usage and availability data. Generally, we've had savings in some areas. I do think a piece of that comes down, as I've said, to the work that Jennie and Chris and their different teams are looking at different aspects of it. Chris looking at the sort of commercial control and the processing of that and how we manage our costs, and Jennie looking at the supply chain and how we get our materials and how we negotiate and how we reduce SKU numbers and get those efficiencies. They're not massive numbers, but they make a big difference sort of on the direction of that sort of build cost.
On labor availability, similar sort of story. Labor availability in our sector hasn't been easy at any point apart from through the major downturn of 2008, and believe me, we don't want to go back there. We're always working at it. It would be wrong to give you a sense, "Oh, no, we can just click our fingers and fill a site with good quality teams." We have good stability. Those sort of relationship things like Pay It Forward, but our general attitude to our subcontract base, both through the pandemic and generally, do help us. We haven't seen a big exodus of people who work on our sites who might originally have come here through different stages of boom and bust. We haven't seen a big reduction in those numbers. It remains reasonably stable. There is inflation, but it's manageable inflation.
Does that answer your question, Shane?
Yeah, perfect. That's really helpful. Thank you very much.
No problem. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question. Yes, sir. The next question comes from Gavin Jago Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Morning all. Can you hear me this time?
We can, Gavin.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Excellent. There we go. I managed to get the technology to work. Okay, just a few if I could, please. The first one is just on outlet guidance. Don't know if you can put any hard numbers on how you expect those to grow over the next two to three years. I think the second one, Pete, I think back in January in the trading update, you said that 2022 is when, is the first year when that margin range would be feasible, that 21%-22%. I guess as we sit here today, how has your thinking on that changed, if at all, or your confidence in that? The final one is just on the nine-month customer service survey. What do you see as kind of the main problems coming through? Because obviously there's a gap between the eight week and the nine months.
You've got 78% of people saying they'd recommend. What are the main issues you kind of see when people aren't recommending you?
Yeah. If I pick up the last one, and Chris, sort of leave you to comment on the guidance points on volume and margin. I think it's important to understand that the nine-month survey and the eight-week survey will never be the same number. They measure different things and not just at a different point in time. There is part of it and we've seen the nine-month survey numbers slowly tick up. Today, they are already higher and the highest they've ever been, actually, than the 77, 76, I think it was, that we saw last year. Some of that is the things that we've done that affect the eight-week survey just take longer to come through into the impact on the nine-month survey results. Some of it is just time. They ask a different range of questions.
The nine-month survey is more related and it covers some of the same things, but it's also related to people's sense of satisfaction with the site, with parking, with those sorts of things. You have to deal with a different range of issues to get the right score. We don't aspire to have to completely close that gap. We do aspire to see both general improvements in the nine-month survey to close the gap a bit, but most importantly of all, to make sure that the weakest performance on the nine-month survey sort of pulls up, which is what we've seen as a trend in the eight-week survey.
I mean, on the eight-week survey, we now have sort of every one of our five divisions for last year hitting a five-star score, which is a great place to be, because the biggest challenge when we really had our bigger challenges with customer service going back sort of four years or so when the industry did was the great was great, the good was okay, it was the handful of the small number of sites or business units at the bottom were really quite poor. We don't have that anymore. We can see that trend happening on the nine-month survey. The short answer is, some of it's time, but they'll never be quite the same and they measure different things and we shouldn't be expecting the same score because statistically they're different measures. Chris.
Okay. Just a quick follow-up on that. In terms of where you stack up versus, I guess, others in the sector, is it kind of a similar pattern, kind of a 10%- 15% gap between the eight week and the nine months?
There is a very similar gap. I'd say from our most recent survey, we don't get the same level of data because of the industry-wide focus. We've sort of majored on the nine-month survey more than others and talking about it because we think it is important. It's important to understand it's different and you shouldn't accept the same score. It's also important because I think in some ways it gives a better, more rounded view of satisfaction rather than your immediate kind of interaction with the customer after completion. There is generally a gap. It's a similar sort of level. I couldn't tell you at any one point in time exactly where it sits because we don't get quite the same data.
As I say, we see the progress we've made on that nine-month survey over the last sort of eight or nine months actually puts us in a very strong position on that relative to our peers.
On margin guidance, Gavin. Our guidance for 2021 operating margin, including joint ventures, has been upgraded today. We're saying for 2021 it's 18.5%-19%. I think, referring back to what we said in January on margins going further forward than that, we said that in 2022 we'd be getting back to a normal-ish sort of margin. What do I mean by normal-ish? Probably something similar to 2019 levels, which is about 100 basis points up on our 2021 guidance. As Pete said at the time, we're targeting at the top end of that range, something to start with the two. When you get into 2023 and that additional volume starts coming through, that's when really that's the first year when we would expect to be heading back into that 21%-22% operating margin target range.
That's great. Thanks. Just on the outlook, I guess over that time period as well, is there any kind of, if you're going to be flat this year, where do you need to be driving the outlet numbers to?
Yeah. We wouldn't normally give numerical guidance, Gavin, but I stand by what I've said before, sort of broadly flat at the end of this year and then starting to build particularly in the second half as next year as the numerically additional outlets come through in the recent acquisitions. Sort of late 2022 and 2023, we'll see the outlet numbers start to grow. I'm not going to give you a number. I think we stand by the completions numbers that we've talked about into 2023 and 2024. Giving very specific outlet guidance when you're dependent on the planning system is never particularly comfortable. Some meaningful growth starting to happen in 2023 and 2024, but starting in the end of 2022.
Very clear. Thanks so much indeed.
Thank you. That concludes our Q&A session for today. I will now hand over back to Pete Redfern for the closing remarks. Please go ahead, sir.
Great. Thank you. Thank you everybody for joining us today, and for your questions. I like to think that the next time we do this with the half year, we will all be in the same place and we can see you as well as you seeing us. Take care. Bye-bye.