This story highlights the fact that the house builders will build absolutely anywhere. Extreme care needs to be taken when buying new homes on these so-called brown field sites. You really need to do your homework to find out what that land was used for.

Amazingly, even though the authorities knew about the nature of the lake, planning permission was granted for a modern housing estate to be built on a tip next to the poisoned body of water in 2003.

Last night one worried father, whose house sits on the edge of the toxic mere, said: “We feel we have been lied to by everyone, and everybody round here is very angry about it.

“At no stage did Barratt homes tell us anything about what was buried in that lake and when we came to visit there were no hazardous waste signs on the main gate as there are now.

“Not only do we face financial ruin because we will never be able to sell the house, but our garden literally backs onto the lake so we are terrified for the health of our young children.”

Read more about the poisonous lake

I was just writing about issues with parking on a new build estate in Devon and how developers try to maximise the number of units on a site by minimising parking and play areas etc. If residents are lucky the local council will intervene to ensure that certain features are required to get planning consent. However, this doesn’t mean the builders actually meet the requirements set by the builders. We know the builders are not afraid of flouting the law to maximise profits and here is an example of Barratt Homes not providing a play area:

Children have no safe place to play because their parents say a housing development has been left without its promised play area. Installing a play area was part of the planning conditions for the Barratt Homes development at Lady Beam Court in Kelly Bray.
But more than two years after moving in, residents are still waiting for the facility. Sean Milne, who lives at the Lady Beam Court development with his wife and four children, said he bought a house on the back of the plans.
‘We thought there would be a play area and now all we’ve been left with is an empty, muddy field,’ he said.

Read more over at the Cornish Times.

New home developers hire specialist planning consultants and designers that aim to maximise the profitability of every planned development by ensuring that the housing density is a high as possible. This impacts on many aspects of a development that make living there more enjoyable such as open spaces, play areas and the like. However, the one that causes the most problems with residents is the lack of parking. Visit any new build estate at the weekend when everybody is at home and people are entertaining visitors you will see what I mean.

I read this article earlier about a Barratt Homes estate where the residents are putting “polite notices” on cars stating that the road is private so visitors cannot park there. Although this is technically correct, it would be private for long and once the council has adopted it anybody can park there.

Here is the article:

]Estate agents Whitton and Laing have waded in over a row over parking at Norman Crescent.

Recently residents were being warned off becoming vigilante traffic wardens by cops after two drivers found notes on their parked cars saying the road was private.

Read more about this parking problem.

Or is that Gladedale… Snagging forum member  Clare was due to move into her new house on 23/10/09 and the day before, yes the day before, she was told it would be another week.  Well that in itself is not unusual. Many new build buyers are let down time and time again by the builders and end up out of pocket because of completion delays.

However, Clare now has to wait till 31/03 (I assume that is this year) and that is only a rough estimate!

Anyway, Clare has been to the press and you can find her story here:

A north-east woman is still waiting for the keys to her new home – three months after she was due to move in.

Clare Davidson bought the “luxury” one-bedroom Bett Homes (formerly Gladedale) flat near Newmachar for £153,000 last year.

A day before she was due to move in, on October 23, she was told the date would be pushed back by a week.

A few days later, the developer said there had been a leak in the property, located in the former Kingseat Hospital building.

Read more

Bolton Council has successfully taken action against Barratt Homes who have been fined £5,400 for flyposting in the Bolton area. The builder was given ample opportunity to take down the illegal posters but failed resulting in the local council taking action.

Obviously, the builder sees this fine as being insignificant compared to the advertising and marketing benefits it gets from these unsightly adverts that they plastered all lampposts around the Bolton estate. As it is not the first time the builder has been fined for fly posting.

Their scant regard for the law in this area does make you wonder about their attitude to the law in other areas such as the building regulations. Quite a scary thought really.

Read more about it in the Bolton Evening News:

A PROPERTY developer has been fined £5,400 and ordered to pay £1,190 costs for illegally fly posting on lampposts in Bolton.

Bolton Council brought the case against Barratt Manchester Ltd which trades as Barratt Homes.

The company pleaded guilty to nine offences of displaying unlawful advertisements during a hearing at Bolton Magistrates Court on Tuesday.

The developer was fined £600 for each offence under Section 224 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.

Court fines property firm £5,400 for illegal posters

The Daily Mail has an article today about widespread problems with poor sound insulation in new build homes. What do you expect when there is no standards and homes simply have to adhere to a set of theoretical standards managed by a company called Robust Details Ltd (I think that must be an ironic name). Anyway, they are quoted in the article as saying that often when testing takes palce as a result of a complaint to the NHBC the homes meet standard the home owners are still not happy. Quite offensive really – they are basically saying that there poor souls are just whingeing.

Anyway, read it for yourself:

Home insulation has become big business, thanks to grants inspired by the Government’s carbon emission reduction target. But never mind heat insulation, Trevor and Elaine New want to know what has happened to the sound insulation in their flat in Pendlebury, Greater Manchester.

Their joy in picking up a flat at Bryant Homes’ development Joule Point for £110,000 at the bottom of the housing slump in October 2008 has been somewhat tempered by the regular pounding of footsteps upstairs.

‘I have no complaint against the neighbours, who are just going about their normal business, but I don’t think we should be able to hear them in our flat,’ says Trevor, 58, who works in the construction industry himself as a health-and-safety adviser.

One downside of a brand new house is that the access road to it may not have been adopted by the local council.

And as residents of the Balmossie Green development off the A92 opposite Panmurefield Village have found, if that road is on a hill, there may be no-one who has the legal responsibility to treat snow and ice on it.

During the run up to Christmas when conditions were particularly treacherous, some residents were simply unable to get their cars up the steep brae to their houses. It is reported that some have spun on the ice.

This story is about Balmossie Green, a Stewart Milne Homes development. You can read more about Stewart Milne in the forums.

This guide will help you navigate the new build buying process: from selecting a plot, choosing a design through to considering security and parking. This comprehensive guide will help you make the right choices to ensure you find the perfect home.

For illustration

This 2000 word guide  is the perfect antidote to the marketing material provided by the builders ensuring that you are not fooled by artist impressions, glossy brochures, sales staff and show homes.

You can buy this guide for £7.99. or you can get it for free with our snagging guide that has been used by thousands of new build buyers.

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Well it is about time we embraced all things web 2.0 and have set up various social media profiles to help raise awareness of snagging issues and the lack of consumer rights when buying a new build home. Even some of the builders are starting to use these tool which is a sure sign that we are behind the times. Anyway, here they are:

• Snagging.org on Facebook
• Snagging.org on Twitter
• Snagging.org on Flickr

With the property market in the doldrums, millions of us are wondering if our home is the secure investment it once was. But for David Robinson, there was a much more unusual reason to be worried.

When he first moved in to his new house, David had no idea that beneath his drive – and only a few meters from his front door – lay an old, disused mining shaft (which isn’t surprising really because it’s completely invisible to the naked eye). The company that built the house, however, knew all about it – they just didn’t tell David.

David paid 100,000 pounds to Taylor Wimpey for his brand new home in County Durham in 2002. The area has a strong mining heritage, yet the mines search David carried out before buying the property revealed no mineshafts directly affecting his future home. He says that it was only during a casual conversation with the site manager – after he’d bought the house – that David first learned what lurked under his drive.