£50,000 bill to rebuild a wall is worrying residents at Littlehampton

Garth and Maryanne Snyman from Winterton Lodge, Littlehampton explain the issues. Video SR staff

Transcript

00:00 Hi, I'm Garth and this is Maryanne, my wife. We are leaseholders at Meterton Lodge in Little Hampton.

00:06 We have a dispute with the property next door. It's a Churchill development. When they constructed

00:19 the development here, they, in our view, caused an ancient flint wall to collapse.

00:28 We are in a bit of a stalemate at the moment. We should pay for the wall. In our view,

00:36 at the very least, our management company, range management, should be talking again to Churchill

00:43 with a view to reaching some sort of compromise for the cost, which is exorbitant. For a wall of

00:50 only about five metres that's fallen down, the cost is somewhere between 45 and 50,000, which we as

00:58 leaseholders can't afford. Maryanne, do you want to add anything? Well, the wall is an old wall,

01:06 ancient wall, and it's listed and so it comes with a lot of regulations and parameters that

01:13 cost money. So it's got to be reconstructed stone by stone and this is a massive cost.

01:20 So we're looking at really trying to find options to build a cheaper wall or to just make it safe

01:28 and plant things in front of it. And we're coming unstuck because of regulation. And of course,

01:34 that means a lot of, we could go and get legal advice, but that's not within our means. So it

01:40 is a bit of a stalemate. It's been going on since 2019, so it's a long time. COVID, of course, just

01:49 gave the excuse to drag it out a bit more, but it's now becoming imminent that this is now going

01:54 to just be fixed to the most expensive standard and that's taking it down and building it up

02:02 stone by stone, which we want to find alternatives.