Site Visit and Trading Update

Persimmon PLC
19 May 2004

                                                                     19 May 2004

                          SITE VISIT AND TRADING UPDATE

Persimmon plc, is one of the UK's largest house builders, and today we are
hosting a visit for analysts to our business in the North East of England. In
addition to a number of site visits, the management team will give presentations
about the growth opportunities available in both the Core Persimmon brand and
Persimmon's premium brand, Charles Church.

In the last financial year to 31 December 2003, we legally completed 11,173 Core
Persimmon homes out of 24 offices nationally. The average output per office was
465 units over the year and the Core Persimmon operating margin was 21.8% in the
second-half. We have targeted an optimum number of completions from each Core
Persimmon office of circa 600 units and, in due course, the group expects to be
able to grow the business to this level without incurring significant additional
overhead.

There is also scope to expand the number of Core housing businesses. Due to
strong regional demand, we have recently opened a further office in Teesside in
the North East of England as the number of completions from this region exceeded
the optimum 600 units.

Persimmon acquired the Charles Church brand in 2001 as part of the Beazer Group
acquisition. In the last full year of Beazer ownership(*), Charles Church
completed 438 units from four offices in the south of England at operating
margins of less than 11 per cent. In the period since acquisition, we have
successfully opened three new Charles Church businesses, and in the last
financial year, we achieved our initial target of building c. 1,000 Charles
Church homes per annum. Charles Church operating margins increased to 15.0 per
cent in the second-half of 2003 inspite of our investment in the brand's
infrastructure.

Our management has been very encouraged by the positive response to the Charles
Church brand by both customers and land owners throughout the country and we
have identified great potential for yet further growth.

We are now building on 25 per cent more Charles Church sites than at the same
time last year with sites as far afield as Kelso in Scotland and Torquay in the
South. In the longer term, we aim to have twelve offices completing circa 300
homes from each office giving an annual output of circa 3,600 homes. We are
confident that, once the expansion phase is complete, Charles Church margins
will continue to progress to deliver margins in line with our strong Core
housing performance.

The presentations to analysts given at today's visit will be available on the
company's web site, www.persimmonhomes.com later today.

Current Trading

Since the AGM on 22 April 2004 current trading has continued to be strong with
high visitor levels across all the regions and stronger weekly sales activity
when compared to 2003. Persimmon has an excellent forward order book with total
forward sales revenue up by over 30% compared to the same time last year. The
number of homes forward sold is 17% ahead of last year and average selling
prices are up circa 12% at £169,000 per home. We believe that the recent
decision to raise interest rates will contribute to ensuring that the market is
sustainable.

John White, Group Chief Executive of Persimmon, commented: 'We are delighted to
be hosting this visit to the North East which we consider to be one of the key
growth regions of our business. Persimmon is in excellent shape. Trading
continues to be strong and we have ample scope for further organic growth and to
make acquisitions, should the right opportunity emerge.'

* Year to 30 June 2000

For further information, please contact:

Persimmon plc                               Tel: [phone]
John White, Group Chief Executive            
Mike Killoran, Group Finance Director       

Finsbury                                    Tel: [phone]
Ed Orlebar                                  Mob: [phone] 
Faeth Birch                                 Mob: [phone]



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