New build housing estate in Shrewsbury where developers have not even finished off roads and paths.
The Lily Hay Estate in Shrewsbury has been finished for a bit now but the residents feel abandoned and are left with unfinished paths and roads and messy areas.
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00:00You're a resident here in Shrewsbury on the Lillie Hay Estate.
00:03I am.
00:04And how old's the estate roughly?
00:06Nearly, well it was first people moved in in December 2019, so five years this Christmas.
00:12And we're going to show on the viewers on the video there some of the issues.
00:17It's still a mess isn't it? The paths, the road.
00:19It is dreadful and I've been fighting the cause for at least two years.
00:24We haven't had a site foreman on this estate for two years.
00:29So nobody walks it, nobody understands.
00:32Taylor Wimpey's customer service is absolutely appalling and I've been in touch with them
00:37monthly, weekly and daily for two years and it's been really stressful.
00:43It's hard going but we won't give in.
00:46The residents are very very unhappy and we just need to get it sorted.
00:52So Lynne when you find yourself moving to an estate you know they say oh it's going to be this,
00:57it's going to be that, it's going to look wonderful
00:59and then you spend a lot of money on a house and they don't finish it.
01:03They don't you know finish the paths, the roads, the kind of communal areas look a mess.
01:09What comebacks do you have that the council don't want to know,
01:12trading standards don't want to know?
01:14The council don't want to know because they say until it's completely finished
01:18they don't adopt the roads.
01:19So until then they don't take it off Taylor Wimpey.
01:22Taylor Wimpey just have nothing to say other than we understand your frustrations.
01:28They have no idea how frustrating it is.
01:32It's frightening, we went 18 months with no street lights whatsoever.
01:37Through the winter it was dangerous, doesn't matter whether it's health and safety issues
01:41we're talking of, they just don't want to know.
01:45They treat us like morons and it's just not acceptable and we won't go away.
01:52And you were saying what you'd like to see is you know
01:54government taking a more of a proactive kind of position.
01:59Possibly you know there's a pool of money that doesn't get released until kind of
02:03they've proven they've done all the work and signed off the estate, some kind of system.
02:09I believe when you're buying a new home,
02:12whether it's mortgage or whether you're buying it is irrelevant but
02:15a pool and a percentage of the money of the cost of the house should be held
02:20in a trust or by a solicitor, by somebody and until the estate is finished,
02:28so the houses have been delivered and snagged, the roads, the paths and the POSs are complete
02:33and the lighting, that's when they should receive that extra part of the money.
02:38Now we hand our money over immediately we have no comeback whatsoever.
02:44They can walk away and all we can do is fight and we have been fighting for two years.
02:50It's very tiring and it's it's really stressful.
02:54So you were saying that this path here has issues with the drainage
02:57because there's a bit of rain and the whole path here just floods out.
03:00Yes, that's just from the drizzle we had yesterday.
03:03Yeah.
03:03Normally right from last October with the rain that we've had this last year,
03:09this was completely covered.
03:11You wouldn't be able to walk through it, you'd have to walk around it and the grass would be sodden
03:15and the same is at that end.
03:18So you couldn't access into the estate through its natural walkway.
03:24So Lynne, we've got the drain covers here peeping out.
03:28It even says so on the sign.
03:29And you were saying that some of them have had to be done a few times because they just wear away.
03:33Some of them have been topped up at least four times because the cars have to drive around them
03:37because there's no room to go either side of them, it constantly wears it down.
03:41So they keep coming and topping it up rather than actually topping the road
03:45and this road should have been topped 15 months ago.
03:53So Lynne, we've just got a bit of a play area here
03:55and you were pointing out there's some stones edging.
04:01I mean that's, you know, if someone falls down and bangs their head on that.
04:05And the weird thing is this looks like it was meant to be a path doesn't it or something?
04:09I've had no reply at all as to why it's even here.
04:12Yeah.
04:12But the only thing I can think it's a path
04:14because currently people are now coming and walking and they walk along here
04:19and they walk on these people's private drives which they're not supposed to.
04:22And how much are residents paying for this to have this maintained?
04:26To have this maintained we've just had the bill £8,000 a year.
04:30Just for mowing some grass?
04:31Just for this child's play area, yes.
04:34£8,000 a year?
04:35Yes and it only gets mowed every fortnightly
04:39between May and September and the rest of the year it's not touched.
04:45So Lynne, the landscaping on the estate leaves a lot to be desired.
04:51It certainly does.
04:52We've had lots of POSs that have never been laid at all.
04:55We've had hedging that it's just been overtaken by the grass
05:01because the bark they put down they refuse to put any weed control underneath it.
05:06So everything just grows through it.
05:08Actually we can see that can't we if we walk along.
05:11So who's meant to maintain all this then?
05:15Taylor Wimpey were right up until the beginning of this month
05:18where they've just handed over to our estate management people.
05:23But we have yet to have any communication with them
05:29about how it's going to be managed once they've taken it on.
05:36So Lynne, randomly there's two lampposts.
05:39What's going on with that?
05:41There is.
05:42At the beginning of February a company came.
05:45The one is a sensor light that hasn't worked for some time
05:48and they are transitioning to the basic lamppost.
05:51But they have all been like this along the walkway since the beginning of February
05:56and nothing has happened since those days.
05:59And you were saying there's still some it's weird with the streetlights.
06:02There's streetlights that are on permanently.
06:04There are streetlights that are on 24-7.
06:06There are streetlights that don't come on at all.
06:09And there are streetlights that are incomplete.
06:11And nobody seems to have an answer as to why nothing is finished.
06:16There are three things for Taylor Wimpey to finish off.
06:20The one is the lighting.
06:22The one is the paths and roads.
06:23And the other is the POS.
06:24And we have none of them complete.
06:27Not one of the tasks they need to complete is done.