A guide to living in Gloucestershire

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

Great location as no development planned opposite. Very close to shops, restaurants and ideal access to motorway for work.

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

Very well, engineers have been very helpful and friendly.

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

Nothing really comes to mind, I think we covered most things when viewing

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

For such a big housing estate there are no shops or anything for convenience. Took a long. Time to get a park in. However the area is lovely, neighbourly and well thought out by builders. Our garden is a big size for a new build.

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

Wish we knew just got big the development would get, promised shops but still not in. Customer service is fabulous and a wonderful primary school on site.

What is the best feature of your home:

Home office and private garden are the best features

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.