A guide to living in Gloucestershire

Please tell us about the good and bad aspects of living in your local area:

Our area is very good. Close to the city centre and walking distance to practicality anything you could need in terms of amenities

Please share one thing (or more) which you wish you had known before you moved in:

How bad Matthew Homes are with after-sales and general build quality.

What is the best feature of your home:

Location. The neighbours are all nice people and it is generally a quiet place to live.

Please tell us about the good and bad aspects of living in your local area:

Great area to live, poor for parking but that’s the only real negative. Traffic can be a bit of a nightmare but most thing s you need are walking distance

How has the building management responded to any problems or issues you have raised:

Quickly sorted the issue on the boiler by using external company’s

Please share one thing (or more) which you wish you had known before you moved in:

Slow to fix communal areas, lift has been faulty for over a year

Please tell us about the good and bad aspects of living in your local area:

Good - great amenities, restaurants, shops, theatre and cinema in easy walking distance. OK - on street parking and road noise (we are at the rear of the property, away from the main road). Poor - our parking bay is situated directly under a silver birch. If we park in our bay, our car is covered in bird droppings on a daily basis. This is unpleasant, unhygienic and not good for the paintwork. Despite repeated requests to the managing agents to prune the tree, this is taking too long to resolve. Bin collections are erratic and often the communal bins are over flowing. For the number of residents, there are not enough recycling bins.

How has the building management responded to any problems or issues you have raised:

As above. The management company have been really poor. Slow, unresponsive, poor communication and failure to deal with issues raised.

Please share one thing (or more) which you wish you had known before you moved in:

Better advice on using the hot water heating system. The advice from the estate agents and Barnwood was to leave the heater on constant. Our first electricity bill was enormous! We now use a time switch and our bill has reduced substantially. Had we known that our parking bay was unusable (see above) we would have insisted on a remedy before we moved in.

Please tell us about the good and bad aspects of living in your local area:

Property design-excellent. Quality of build-Poor. Customer Services. I’ve wasted over £400K on Redrow

Please share one thing (or more) which you wish you had known before you moved in:

How poor the whole buy legal aftercare actually is

What is the best feature of your home:

Only best thing is the design, but no soundproofing

Please tell us about the good and bad aspects of living in your local area:

Location and services are very good, proximate to high street and retail and hospitality. And good access to transport options. Property management in transition to full occupancy has been a mixed experience with some issues around bin storage, infrastructure and cleaning.

How has the building management responded to any problems or issues you have raised:

Promptly with regard to snagging period issues. FM has been slow to respond to some issues.

Please share one thing (or more) which you wish you had known before you moved in:

How to use all of the services within apartment ( heating, water, appliances) Schedule and management of third party FM