ANGRY residents of a new £3.6 million housing development at Hilary Close in Carhampton have criticised the site owners and the construction company for delays in rectifying what they claim is a “nightmare” caused by serious defects.

They accuse Hastoe Housing Association and Hallsall Construction of having “no interest in the welfare of their tenants”.

The estate has, they say, been plagued by problems and the occupants have been “at huge risk of fire damage”.

The 25-home Hilary Close development, named after the late Free Press columnist and local author and historian Hilary Binding, was completed in spring 2016, some 25 years after housing was first suggested for the Townsend Farm site.

Five properties have been sold on the open market, four have been bought under a shared ownership scheme and 16 are tenanted.

A number of residents have now joined forces to demand action.

They want to know why West Somerset Council, responsible for building control when the estate was built, did not identify the faults before signing off the work and why their records on the development have only recently been made available to the new Sedgemoor-based Somerset Building Control Partnership which deals with building control.

They claim that the fire doors in all the houses failed to comply with fire regulations and that the main power cable into the houses was inadequate, resulting in the repositioning of all the main fuse boxes higher up on walls.

The Free Press has seen the domestic electrical installation report of one house following testing at the property last July. It gives an overall assessment of “unsatisfactory – which indicates that dangerous and/or potentially dangerous conditions have been identified, or that further investigation without delay is required”.

Henry Lee, Hastoe’s external policy and research co-ordinator, told the Free Press that the company became aware of the problem with the fire doors in Hilary Close last November.

“Since that time, we have undertaken survey work to assess the extent of the problem,” he said.

“Unfortunately, there has been a delay in work being finished due to a problem with contractors and arranging access.

“However, we aim for all the work on fire doors to be completed by the end of next month.”

Tom Wiseman, commercial and technical aftercare manager of Hallsall Construction, was supplied with details of the residents’ complaints but was unavailable for comment.

Full report in the Free Press (February 23).