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Mike76

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Everything posted by Mike76

  1. Yes it did take Hereford Times a long time to publish an article. They also seem to have focused just on the developer and not the Council and the Housing Association. Please see response to article I have just sent to Hereford Times. I also sent a copy to the developer as well: "Dear Hereford Times, Bit disappointed that the article did not even mention Fortis Living and contained no response from Herefordshire council?? Lioncourt Homes welcomed the feedback and did actually meet with us. They have been helpful since. At the end of the day they only built what they were allowed to by the council. They are a business after all. The actual houses are very good quality. The problems lie with the external areas. The individual plot plans that people received did not give people the full picture of how tight the space is on the estate. In my opinion Lioncourt should not have been the only focus of the article. Herefordshire Council and Fortis Living should have been the main focus. They are publicly accountable bodies who have made serious mistakes with the Meadow Park development and the main purpose of the survey was to provide feedback and prevent these mistakes being repeated on future developments. This feedback was also intended for the Planners at the Council and Housing Association (Fortis Living) as well as the developer, amongst others. It should have been pointed out that 12 of the houses on the estate are rented or shared ownership properties owned wholly or partly by Fortis Living and the tenants/owners of these properties had little or no information and little or no choice about moving to the estate. We all had to sign up months before a single brick had been laid. All of these people were assesed as being in "housing need". They cannot afford to buy/ rent on the open market, so should have been protected/supported by the Housing Association/ Council from the mistakes that have been made. For example External plans were not to scale, if given at all. Site visit were not given until we had exchanged contracts/signed tenancy agreements. If only there had just been the foresight to build one or two fewer houses with enough parking for residents and visitors, along with streetlights and pavements, this otherwise great estate with fantastic residents would have been perfect. We know there is very little they can do to change the estate now it is finished, although hopefully we can get some streetlights - a petition with 50 residents signatures has been presented to Parish Council. Yes at the end of the day it is buyer beware, but we just wanted to try and make sure future developments take note of our feedback. If we didn't say something it could/would just happen again on the next development in Herefordshire."
  2. Yeah the garages are pointless. Most are being used for storage as too small to park in and are too far from houses to convert them, to extend the house. Most people would probably swap them for bigger gardens or parking spaces now they have moved in.
  3. Hi, thanks for the welcome. Yes the houses are spacious inside, but yes pricey. We bought ours shared ownership so were lucky in that respect, but the extetnal layout of the estate is a nightmare for all. Neighbours are great. It is a small estate and we all seem to be getting on well, despite the issues, it has the feel of a nice community, but not sure how long that will continue with tge parking issues and damage being caused to property from parking and driving over verges. Shared ownership is a great scheme, but the planners/Housing Association has not been diligent enough to ensure those in housing need were protected from the issues on the site.
  4. We are shared ownership. No money to pay to turn to make home improvements and require housing association permission and planning permission if we did. If we had funds, priority would be to increase share in property and reduce rent, rather than pay for improvements! :-(
  5. Thanks Denise. Parish council chairman has been in touch. Has put streetlights on agenda for next meeting. Not hopeful though. Parish council opposed street lights when plans were approved. Also are their funds to install them and can we install them now all the plots are sold? Planning does seem to be chas, where is the common sense!
  6. 1. Yes we all expected snags and defects, but not quite the number we have had 16 plus in some of our cases. Made much worse by how long it has taken to get them fixed or not in some cases. Some are still not fixed now. Yes some are minor, but to not have a working shower for two weeksand then no working bath for another fortnight when you have two children under 5 is unacceptable. The repairs service has been appalling for lots of people on the site. 2. No plans haven't been changed. Most of us bought off plan, but have had very little info given to us. Plans not to scale, computer generated drawings, plans of just your own plot. No full picture. A lot of us are in housing association properties, so information from them was even worse. Yes maybe we have been naive, but most of us had no idea where to get plans from. As for the housing association properties, should they not shoulder some rsponsibility too as these houses are their assets too and they have let the external layout remain as planned and unchallenged. Somebody was going to live in these houses, the housing association should have protected its tenants interests. .Surely the agencies involved with the planning and development should have used some common sense as they had the full picture. They could see that what they were building had issues and still didnt change it. 3. Openreach blamed developer for not installing correct infrastructure on the site and on time. Developer blamed openreach. We were all stuck in the middle not knowing who to believe and until Bill Wiggin MP got involved it didnt get sorted. To wait a year for phoneline line and broadband is unacceptable. The developer should have sorted the issues. They were quick enough to take peoples money for the houses that weren't finished.
  7. I support the policy to encourage different modes of transport,I walk to work, but there needs to be a robust transfer plan and infrastructure in place to support it. Meadow Park is basically a rural housing estate, it is not in the city centre, people who live there will have cars as will their visitors. The estate is not on a bus route. The nearest bus route is probably a mile away. If thetlre is a bus to catch with the timetable cuts? The site has very few pavements and no streetlighting at all. The same can be said for Attwood Lane, which is dangerous ro walk on at rush hour. Or in the dark. This does nothing to encourage pedestrians or cyclists, especially young families for whom the estate was built for ( 12 houses are housing association). The train station is several miles away. Where are the cycle paths? If the council genuinly wanted to discourage the car at this estate, they should have had a joined up transport plan to go with it. This site has been planned and built from scratch. These things should have been put in place to support it. It looks like the 2.2 space rule has been applied here, but something has gone wrong as we live in a 3 bed and have 2 spaces, fine with us( if we could get to them), but there are several 4 beds on the estate with 1 parking space and a garage( which is too snall to park in). All 4 beds will have 2 cars or more, where are there visitors to park? Where is the sense in planning like that? I can only assume greed has driven the decision to squeeze as many houses as possible on to a small site.
  8. Roger, Yes the pictures of Green Wilding road is a good example of the streets at Meadow Park. There is no provision for visitors parking on the site, just parking for residents and not enough of that either. On street parking is the norm making access a nightmare, especially at night with no streetlights at all on the estate.
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