Costs of delayed move ‘runs into thousands’
FAMILY SPENT A MONTH LIVING IN A HOTEL WAITING FOR THEIR LUXURY HOME TO BE FINISHED
A FRUSTRATED dad has revealed how his family spent a month in a hotel because of delays with their new-build home.
Tim Butters said he and his family felt under pressure to move out of their previous house at the end of July last year.
They expected to move into their new £366,950 property at the Sandlands estate in Hucknall at this time.
But Mr Butters said Harron Homes told the family their new home wouldn’t be ready until the end of September.
So Mr Butters, 48, said they spent about a month in a hotel while they waited to move in.
The self-employed painter and decorator said: “We had to have two hotel rooms because there were four of us.
“You can imagine the amount of money that was incurred from us paying for the hotel, there’s no offer of contributing towards that. They said there was a delay because they were giving us the perfect product.
“That was the reason they kept giving for us being delayed.
“It got to a point where my wife and daughter couldn’t stand it so she went to live with her mum in Bingham which incurred a lot of travelling for her because she works in Kirkby.
“Just me and my son in the end were in a hotel but together we were in the hotel for about four weeks.”
Mr Butters said there had been a number of delays and that the property was originally supposed to be ready in March 2020.
A spokeswoman for Harron Homes said that, due to the outbreak of coronavirus early last year, the company had to close down all its developments for almost three months. This, she said, delayed some customer moving dates.
Mr Butters said he was unhappy with the “unbelievably bad” customer experience he and his family had received from Harron Homes and said their stay in the hotel had been uncomfortable.
He said: “It was one of the hottest summers we’ve had, there was no air conditioning in it, we were in two cramped rooms with a lot of our suitcases and stuff like that and our clothes.
“[With] no washing machine, we had to go round to parents’ houses and take washing.”
Mr Butters said the hotel and food bills had run “into thousands” and said Harron “weren’t interested in covering” the costs.
Upon moving into their fourbedroom detached home last September, Mr Butters said there’d been an issue with blocked drains.
Mr Butters - who lives with his wife, son and daughter - added their heating system hadn’t worked properly for months and was eventually put right in March.
The family want the housebuilder to level their garden, and Mr Butters said there had been other issues with the house.
Summing up their experience with Harron Homes, Mr Butters, who is recovering from surgery, said: “It’s shocking really, the whole thing, how much you pay and the fact that they advertise [the company] as an executive luxury homebuilder.
“It’s far from that.”
He said there was nothing wrong with the style of the house but the finishing of it had been the issue, adding the family have “an amazing view”.
Their home is built on former Rolls-royce land - and it comes after another homeowner in a new-build Persimmon Homes property on the wider site spoke out about his experience.
Councillor Phil Rostance, who represents Hucknall West for the Conservatives on Ashfield District Council, said: “A number of residents have been in touch unhappy with the substandard workmanship on some of the new developments in Hucknall.
“Whilst I feel it is very important that we build these new houses for the families that want to move to Hucknall, it is incredibly important that they are not just ‘thrown up,’ and are made to a standard that the developers themselves would be happy to live in.”
However, other neighbours previously said “the community is amazing” as they praised the new estate.