Woman says flooding has left her garden ‘smelling like a sewer’

A NUNEATON woman has been left with mouldy looking grass and a garden that smells like sewers after it turned into a bog.

Tracey White first complained to Bellway, the developer who built her home, more than a year ago, and the problem is still not fixed.

Drainage issues mean that the bottom of her garden has turned into what she calls a ‘bog’.

She said: “It’s just completely drenched.

“When we’ve had a few days of rain it takes at least a week and sometimes more than that for it to dry.

“It turns the grass a mouldy green and blue colour and all last summer I had an endless amount of flies in the garden.

“You have to wait until you have got weeks and weeks of hot weather for it to dry and we just don’t have that here.”

Tracey moved into the Bellway home, rented from Orbit Housing Association on The Long Shoot, in January 2016 and made her first complaint a few months later.

She added: “We moved in last January and we made a complaint around March time because that’s when I started to see the garden was very muddy and it was becoming a bog.

“Bellway came out and had a look and there was somebody from Orbit housing too. They had all the footage and said they were looking into it.”

Claims were made before the homes were built that the site was unsuitable as it was susceptible to flooding.

Tracey has now made another complaint and is awaiting a response.

“At the end of the day it’s not good enough,” she added “I’ve spent a lot of my money on that garden in the past 12 months and I can’t even spend much time in it.

“In the winter you cannot even walk on the lawn, it just squashes.”

There have been a number of problems caused by the ‘bog’, which have made it virtually impossible for Tracey to enjoy her garden.

She added: “When there’s been rain and it’s been trying to drain away you get all the flies in the daytime and I have had them coming into the house. It smells like the sewer. I cannot get the benefit of the garden until it’s dried.

“When the grass has gone blue I have to go down to the bottom with disinfectant and a brush to clean it.

“You shouldn’t have to be doing that should you?”

Tracey says that one of her next door neighbours has had to create a decking area so that it hides the bog like problem. She says that another had issues with the garden being on a slant and the flooding coming up to their door.

James Banner, Deputy Head of Construction at Orbit, said: “We are aware of the drainage concerns which have been raised. We have made arrangements to visit next week and inspect the drainage to agree what steps will be taken to resolve any issues which exist.”

A spokesperson for Bellway said: “We did undertake an inspection of the property after 12 months. There was no mention of a complaint regarding the garden and we have no record of this at any point during the two year Bellway warranty period.”