Mother says new fence has created an ‘eyesore’
AN “eyesore unusable space” has turned a new dream home into a “nightmare”, a home owner claims.
Claire Rumbelow said extra fencing was erected around the side of her family’s new five-bed property after ramblers started straying off the path and walking across their land and peering in through the windows.
But the 36-year-old mum of two said house builder Charles Church’s solution to that problem has just left her with an even bigger headache.
The fencing has created what she said is an “eye- sore unusable space” at the side of the house, which cost almost £300,000, on the Parc Derwen estate in Coity, Bridgend.
As the original garden wall is still standing – Claire said she has been quoted a minimum of £500 to remove the section of wall that divides the two areas – the new space cannot be accessed from the back garden. However a gate was installed at the front.
“Somebody said to me ‘Why don’t you keep chickens in it?’,” said Claire, who shares the house with her children aged two and four and partner Chris.
She agreed to have the fence “after a long battle with Charles Church” to come up with a solution.
And, even though the company director Andy Baker-Edwards did admit it would look like “an afterthought” in correspondence, Claire has been shocked by how out of place it looks.
She has called on Charles Church to demolish the existing back garden wall to create allthrough access and also to replace the close panel fencing with a wall and panel design in keeping with the rest of the property.
But the house builder has refused to undertake any more work.
Claire said: “In hindsight it’s really not been a very good idea. We have no access into the new fenced-off area from our back garden.
“Really it’s just been left as an unusable space which I don’t know what to do with.
“How they feel it’s accecptable to leave my property the way they have is astonishing.
“The company director Andy Baker-Edwards came to the house in October and said the property clearly hadn’t be ready to move into and shouldn’t have been handed over.
“At that time I had been living here for three months so I find it com- pletely shocking. This isn’t what you expect when you pay so much for a property.”
She said this coupled with other issues – including an overhanging oak tree and a mildew issue in the kitchen cupboards which has led to the replacement of ordinary bricks with vent bricks – have turned the family’s “dream home into a nightmare”.
Andy Baker-Edwards, director-in-charge at Charles Church West Wales, said: “I met with this customer personally and, after much discussion, we came to an agreement whereby we erected a new fence along the boundary line.
“This work was carried out as agreed. As a company we feel we have done all we can to rectify the problem and, consequently, we will not be revisiting this issue.”