Barratt David Wilson Homes Cambridgeshire admitted last year that 88 properties at the Darwin Green site in Cambridge need to be demolished and rebuilt following foundation issues - at a cost of £40 million. Four houses have already been knocked down and work is expected to continue on the site over the next 12 weeks.
In a planning application to Cambridge City Council for the demolition last autumn, the developers said tiles and other materials, such as doors, windows, sanitary and kitchen equipment, would be salvaged where possible and concrete and brick would be crushed on site and reused.
Barratt David Wilson Homes Cambridgeshire said last June that “during inspections” of the Darwin Green site they found some of the homes did not meet their “usual high standards” and the “most effective course of action” was to “demolish the properties and re-build them.”
The massive development, which lies 1.6 miles north west of the city centre, has outline approval for up to 1,593 homes, as well as a new primary school, supermarket and library. The new community will also feature a central park, with 15-acres of open space, and sports facilities.
Phase two of the development is currently being built, with two, three, four and five-bedroom homes now selling for between £575,995 and £850,995. It is believed a number of the affected homes had already been sold, but are not yet occupied. Some of the affected homes are still in the process of being built. A spokesman for Barratt David Wilson Homes Cambridgeshire said last June it was a “small number of unoccupied properties” that did not meet “our usual high standards.”
They said: “As a five-star house builder we have an extensive quality assurance process and during inspections we found that a small number of unoccupied properties at our Darwin Green development did not meet our usual high standards. “Unfortunately, the most effective course of action at this stage is to demolish the properties and rebuild them. We have apologised to the customers affected and understand their frustrations, but we are doing all that we can to lessen the impact of this for them. The most important thing is that the homes we build for our customers are of the highest quality possible and this means spotting and mistakes and putting them right, which is what we are doing here.”
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