George Wimpey is to cut back on planned housebuilding volumes for the rest of this year in order to maintain margins. Chief executive Peter Johnson told Housebuilder magazine's Housing Market Intelligence (HMI) conference that company figures suggested that reservatiuons will drop in the final quarter of 2004 and that the company must react to that. "We have all worked hard to get our margins to levels where we are generating strong cash flows and would be mad to sacrifice that just to deliver the volumes we may have budgeted for in the coming months in rosier times," he said. Johnson was one of 16 high level speakers who addressed more than 200 senior housebuilding industry delegates at the conference on September 7 including housing minister Keith Hill, Bank of England economist Kate Barker and English Partnerships chief executive David Higgins. HMI was held alongside Housebuilding 2004, the industry's new two day event, at the Business Design Centre in London.