Furious residents who paid more than £300,000 on homes in a newbuild estate say their lives are a "nightmare" with the properties riddled with hundreds of faults. Homeowners living in Cotswold Vale near Stratford-upon-Avon, Warkwickshire, complain of "shoddy" building work with wonky windows, unlockable doors, mould, cracked walls and freezing rooms.
More than 140 residents have now formed an action group to demand Persimmon Homes urgently correct the catalogue of problems plaguing the newbuild estate. Retired Royal Navy serviceman Robert Fung, 68, moved into a three-bedroom detached property with his wife Mary, 64, in February 2019.
Since moving into the brand new £315,000 home, the couple have had eight new doors installed after they either failed to lock or were fitted incorrectly. Dad-of-two Robert said: “The whole development is a nightmare when it comes to windows and doors.
“The site management do not seem to care and there is a lack of quality and no duty of care. They know what the issues are, but nothing gets done. People are suffering with mental fatigue."
Mike Hobbs, 52, moved into his £320,000 four-bedroom detached house in July 2019 with his wife Charlotte Hobbs, 49, and their three teenage children. Mike, a Tesco delivery driver, said: “Our front and back doors were warping out of shape and started to not lock.
“Persimmon kept replacing them but then the same thing would happen. In the end, I had to get a professional in to solve the problem.
“When we moved in, we also noticed the three back upstairs windows were not square, so we complained about this too. We eventually had them replaced last December but they have been replaced with windows that don’t match all the other windows in our property.”
Mike also says his house is freezing in the winter which he believes is because the property was not insulated properly when it was built. He added: “At the moment we are trying to heat a house that might not even be heat efficient. I want my kids to be comfy and warm and not have to put jumpers on to watch the TV because they are freezing in their own home.”
In the Cotswold Vale estate, there are 52 social housing properties governed by Platform Housing. Katie Biddle, 29, rents a two-bedroom semi and lives there with her four-year-old son Tobias.
She says she has to “kick” her front door to open it and can hear wind whistling through her drafty home. She said: “I spent my first Christmas bathing at her mum’s house because the bath leaked two days. I now have mould on my bathroom floor and damp patches on my living room ceiling.
“I have been given so many false promises. I physically have to kick the door open, and the windows and doors don’t lock properly. In the area recently, we have quite a few break ins and I’m just waiting for my property to be next.
“My son is constantly coughing, and I am always congested, because of the drafts and mould in our house. You can literally hear the wind whistling through my house. My son was so closed to being hit by a loose roof tile from the neighbour’s property. I get scared about my son’s health in this house."
Wheelchair-bound Taz Wright, 60, lives on her own in a three-bedroom house and says it has been riddled with problems since she moved in to the property in 2018. She said: “After four years, the baseboards in the kitchen have still not been put in.There are lots of faulty electrics across the house including two electrical sockets behind the sink in the kitchen which is dangerous.
“My front door doesn’t close properly, and you have to force it open, and I was promised a ramp to be installed to give me better access to my house two years ago and this still hasn’t been done. The door frame is wonky and the rubber seal around the door is broken, and slugs get into the inside of the door.
“My garden is appalling. The fence was first put in upside down and now it is wonky as the posts were not put into concrete.
“The garden is an absolute bog and there is no drainage, and I can’t use it. Every single room in the house has some form of snagging issue. You have to try to fix it yourself or live with it and because I am disable it is causing me more stress and anxiety and it gets me down.”
Dad-of-three Kris Street, 32, moved into a three-bedroom detached house last summer with his partner, Hannah Johnson, 27, and their three young children. Kris, a customer service operator said: “By Christmas we were having to block up our front and back door with draft excluders and towels, and eventually our sofa to keep in the heat.
“We found ourselves spending an absolute fortune on gas and electricity and by the end of January we were in £600 debt of our energy bills. I dread to think what we be in by the end of this winter as we are already £500 in debt because our house is so cold due to the faulty doors and windows.
“My youngest two who are aged two and three are always coughing and in October this year I had to take my three-year-old to A&E. I walked into her room one day and she was stone cold. I had to shake her, and I got a lump in my throat and thought the worse but thankfully she was okay.”
Lisa Johnson, of Platform Housing, said: "After discovering the complexity of issues on this site, Platform took the decision to create a dedicated team to support and engage with customers at Cotswold Vale. We set up an event to meet those customers earlier in November and since then have also held meetings with Persimmon, involving the National House Building Council, to take customers’ issues to them and fine resolutions.”
A spokesperson from Persimmon Homes said: “We acknowledge there have been some further issues with properties on Cotswold Vale and have written to all residents urging them to get in touch with any concerns. We have carried out surveys on all homes where residents have contacted us and are currently in the process of putting right any issues identified."
