A guide to living in Wiltshire

Buying a home in Tadpole Garden Village has been one of the biggest disappointments. While the property itself was delivered, the overall development has been nothing short of a disgrace. We are now over 3 years in, and the roads are still unfinished, the landscaping is incomplete, and the whole estate looks like a never-ending building site. Crest Nicholson made countless promises about community facilities, infrastructure, and a high-quality finish – but these have been consistently missed or delayed. The lack of proper planning and delivery makes the development feel neglected and half-done. It is completely unacceptable that after so many years, residents are still living with poor roads, unfinished areas, and a lack of basic completion. The marketing painted a picture of a well-designed, thriving community. The reality is very different. Deadlines come and go, promises are broken, and accountability is nowhere to be found. Crest Nicholson have shown little regard for the people who invested their life savings here. If I could turn back time, I would never buy from Crest Nicholson. They care more about selling houses than fulfilling their obligations to residents. My advice: avoid at all costs.

Appalling. Cowboy builders managed by complete clowns. We bought our house off plan in Feb 2022 on the strict understanding that the house would be completed by September. We were assured that as Redcliffe was a ‘quality builder’, there would be no delays, no shortages of labour and no shortages of materials under any circumstances. This soon turned out to be untrue, the house was three months late, we were then told that this was due to shortages of labour and materials (see above). However my wife and I were able to see the house being built, and watched as for four months all work stopped on our house and the two houses opposite ours (which were not even sold) were erected from foundation level to rooftop whilst ours sat untouched. In the end, we had to threaten to walk away from buying the house (we had a three month long stop on our contract), at which point Redcliffe then rushed to complete our house in six weeks. And boy did they mess it up. We hired a snagging company to evaluate our house as there are always snags to be addressed, expecting around 20-40. The guy who came round found over 300 major snags with our house. I think he would have found more, but he just ran out of time. When I asked him what his overall Review was of the house, he simply answered ‘I’ve seen worse’. I couldn’t get any more out of him, but he looked pleased to get in his van and leave. We then found another 200 snags. The central heating did not work when we moved in, which was late December, so we were stuck in a cold miserable house during Christmas whilst it was snowing outside. It took six weeks and over seven visits for Redcliffe to sort the problem. The bath seal leaked when we showered, which ran down through the extractor fan of the downstairs loo below us. As the fan comes on when you open the door, the risk of electric shock was extremely high. Whilst this wouldn’t have been fatal to us, we have an 7 month old daughter, who would almost certainly be killed by such a shock. Due to the heat being off for any weeks in winter, the flooring shrunk, so the entire downstairs Kardean had to be replaced as there were huge gaps between each plank. Redcliffe initially refused to do this, blaming their supplier. We had to fight for months to get this fixed. The bay window profusely leaked at 18 months. It took 3 months and five attempts to fix this. It turned out after many failed fixes that the canopy had been cracked when it was installed, and the installer simply didn’t care, he just rammed the thing in and walked away from the job, knowing full well that it would leak and cause huge damage. The shower screen we paid extra for was not water tight, causing leaks every time we showered in the bath. We had this looked at over 15 times, and replaced three times before it was finally watertight. This took nearly two years for them to fix. I could go on for hours, but I’ll save you the time. We had workman in the house every single week from completion until our daughter was born, some eighteen months. And after four months after that, we had the workman back in, and have been every single week since. They really are that bad. And we’re not alone, every single house in our street has had a similar number of issues. When getting our boiler serviced, the plumber told me he had condemned five boilers on my street alone in a single year because they had been incorrectly installed. That’s how bad Redcliffe are, they employ the cheapest possible workmen, who usually send the trainees in to do the job, and don’t bother to check they’ve done it properly. So if you are thinking of buying a Redcliffe house, for Pete’s sake don’t. Get a Taylor Wimpey or Barratt or just go anywhere other than these clowns. They treat you appallingly. I would not wish a Redcliffe house on anybody. You deserve better.

Lots of snags, poorly managed so snagging takes months to conclude. Poor finish internally, especially decoration. Badly fitted doors, over 50% of windows had to be adjusted as didn't close properly. Lots of plumbing issues. Brickwork built in 3 stages with distinct colour change at each level.

Lots of snags, waiting to long for them to be sort it, they come and they don't really fix them, I have to call them back. Very unprofessional. Disappointed but other than that the development is not to bad bad overall, special the location, happy with that

This was our first ever home therefore we weren’t really sure what to expect when purchasing here. The design of our style house suits us but calling this house a 3 bed is extremely generous. 2 bedrooms just about fit a double bed and a wardrobe in, but the 3rd ‘bedroom’ is literally a box that is not suitable as a bedroom. For the price, we could have definitely got more in hindsight. There is hardly any storage built into the house which means the little bedroom space we have has to be taken up by significant amount of furniture. Our garden is a decent size and despite not being south facing, we get a good amount of sun for the majority of the day! The houses are not crammed together like other developments we visited so our garden feels more private without people overlooking. It has occasionally been a difficult process to get some after care problems with the house rectified, despite reporting them early. However, most of our problems have now been resolved and the people we were dealt with were always polite so we are happy. At the moment, there are no facilities to enjoy as such due to the development still being at early stages so I cannot comment on this aspect. Overall, the houses are modern, designed fairly well, and I think the facilities will be good once the development is finished! We are most excited for the planned parks and the green spaces to open so we have more places to walk our dogs.