Bovis Homes, which has its South West headquarters in Gloucestershire, has defended itself against claims of shoddy workmanship.

An investigation by The Times, widely pounced upon by other national newspapers, accused the housebuilder of constructing poor quality homes.

According to The Times the firm, which has its Bovis Homes Western offices in Bishops Cleeve, has been misleading buyers and "deliberately" delaying essential repairs to what it called "poorly built homes".

Nearly 3,000 people have reported complaints as part of a Facebook group campaign.

Bovis has hit back, saying the story - which uses data from October 2016 to October 2017 - does not reflect the company today and that customer satisfaction was riding high once again.

"Currently more than 87 per cent of our customers would recommend us to friends and family, in line with the industry standard and representing a 30 percentage point improvement on where we were at the same time last year, while notified faults per property have fallen by two thirds over the year," a spokesman told Punchline.com.

"This means we are trending strongly as a four-star housebuilder, based on completions in the current HBF year, which started in October 2017."

One of the nation's biggest house builders, responsible for 3,500 properties a year, Bovis stood accused of "failing adequately to repair defects and engaging in "underhand behaviour" to limit bad publicity.

"At least one disgruntled homebuyer claimed that they were prevented from talking about issues by a gagging clause," wrote The Times.

Last year Bovis was forced to apologise for poor workmanship after the newspaper's said it revealed: "Hundreds of buyers had complained of bouncing and vibrating floors, leaks, missing insulation panels, poor drainage and unfinished gardens.

"In one home, joists supposed to be holding up first-floor bedrooms were found to be resting on plasterboard."

A Bovis spokesman told MailOnline there had been a 'spike' in customer complaints in 2016/2017 after the firm has increased its annual housing target to 6,000.

A spokesman told Punchline: "The articles in question in no way reflect Bovis Homes as a business today, nor the enormous amount of work that has been done by our staff to improve both the quality of our homes and our customer service.

"Over the last year we have made huge changes to our build quality and customer service and have transformed Bovis Homes."