A guide to living in Cambridgeshire

If you want a nice new shiny house full of botched DIY then Barratt has you covered, unsanded doors and skirting boards, thresholds not fitted properly, windows really poor quality, with melted corners and sharp bits, chips all over the handle, front door and frame is chipped and being replaced doesnt lock properly, kitchen windows don't latch, silicone wiped up the walls leaving a grey line, flooring glue over all the hard flooring downstairs, carpet not fitted properly in corners. Honestly if we knew it would be this bad we wouldn't have moved in. All the staff we dealt with were lovely but dont be fooled by the show homes, the finish is nothing like that whatsoever youre better off going elsewhere if you want a home built by professionals.

The site is very modern and still under construction, however there is a pleasant mix of property developers and property styles. There are park facilities for younger families and it is very close to local transport networks. Future plans include a David Lloyd and M&S which is great. It would be great if there were plans for a local pub in the future!

Design lay out is fine. I like the adding of disabled parking & bike rack sheds which can be locked away, so well thought out really in some respects. I also like the easy access to the bins, they are laid out so you cannot go wrong and understand what goes in what bin etc

I am writing this to formally record the gross incompetence and institutional cruelty of Hill and L&Q. For over eighteen months, we were forced to live in a "hot box" corner unit that reached temperatures of 35 celcius, and 25 celcius lowest when minus temp outside. This was not a "warm flat"; it was a structural failure. While subsequent phases of the development were built with through-airflow and additional windows to prevent this exact issue, we were left in a unit with zero ventilation and no escape from the heat. The Safeguarding Negligence: The most "vile" aspect of this experience was the total disregard for the safety of my young, autistic son. Despite being informed repeatedly that my son has ADHD/Autism and a compulsive need to climb, your "solution" to the heat was for us to leave third-story windows wide open—windows that initially lacked child locks. When I raised the alarm, I was asked why I wouldn't simply "allow him on the balcony," despite the balcony having a structural cutout that acted as a literal ladder for a climbing child. Hill and L&Q effectively told me to choose between my son suffering heatstroke or him falling to his death. The Human Cost: Your incompetence was not just an inconvenience; it was life-altering. • Physical Health: The prolonged stress and uninhabitable conditions resulted in me developing a condition that required a two-hour surgery to rectify. My body quite literally broke under the strain of living in the environment you provided. • Mental Health: I was pushed into a severe mental health crisis while being gaslighted by staff who treated us with contempt, acting as if we were "lucky" to be there. • Stolen Years: You tainted the precious first years of my son’s life. Instead of a safe home, he was subjected to scorching heat and the constant booming of a neighbor’s subwoofer that you refused to address, despite hundreds of emails and reports from Environmental Health and data loggers proving the "scorching" temperatures. Corporate Indifference: I emailed the CEOs of Hill, but it is clear that when you are focused on multi-million pound trade deals with local authorities, the lives of individual families mean nothing. You chose to ignore professional workmen and data-backed evidence for over a year and a half. L&Q and Hill are not "home builders." They are developers who profit from human misery and hide behind corporate bureaucracy when their "product" causes physical and mental harm. You have failed in your basic duty of care, and the damage you have done to my family is irreparable.

We have not had any issue with the management, although I know others have within shared ownership. Having the local restaurant and Co-Op is handy. School traffic can be an issue as it creates a bottleneck as there’s only one way in and out of the development.