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Housebuilder Persimmon has signalled a payment to shareholders after seeing demand for housing return to almost pre-pandemic levels.

The York-based firm has issued a trading update for the first half of the year in which it reveals that sale completions stood at 7,406, close to the 7,584 seen two years ago. Revenues for the same period rose slightly to £1.84bn.

The company also said it had healthy forward sales of £1.82bn and had made land acquisitions in nearly 50 locations that would translate into 10,000 new housing plots.

As a result of its bounceback, Persimmon said a capital return programme would see shareholders paid 110p per share in August.

Group chief executive Dean Finch said: “Persimmon performed well during the first half of the year delivering new home sales completions approaching the levels achieved in the first half of 2019.

“I am particularly pleased that we are continuing to achieve pre-Covid build rates across our sites whilst successfully maintaining higher levels of build quality and customer service. Our current HBF customer satisfaction score is 91.9%1, with Persimmon’s monthly performance trending ahead of five star for the last 18 months. We are providing much needed new homes to our customers whilst continuing to drive forward our ambition of building right, first time, every time.

“Customer demand for our new homes has been strong right across the º£½ÇÊÓƵ with healthy sales reservation rates through the period. The group has an excellent forward order book at the end of June of £1.82bn.

“In supporting the group’s high quality growth we are taking advantage of attractive land investment opportunities and successfully brought over 10,000 new plots into the business across 48 locations in the period.