Badbury Park, SN3 by Persimmon Homes

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

Lovely area. Not enough parking for the flats in particular, most households appear to have two cars. Shop due to open this Autumn currently no facilities open. 2 x parks Lovely open areas very close by

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

I am a shared ownership buyer so I have to go through them, hit and miss.

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

Avoid the facebook group - nosy neighbours moaning.

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

The best bit of living in this particular area, I find, are the access to main routes. The M4 leading west (Bristol etc) and east (London) is on the doorstep, the A414 is within breathing distance and this takes you to the Cotswolds within 25 minutes and a good access point for reaching the North West of England. The other big benefit of living here are the walkable countryside areas. Coate Water is a 10 minute walk, and this is probably one of Swindon's best selling points. The worst part of living here is easily the lack of facilities. It's a 10 minute drive to get anything - shopping, coffee etc. I mean you can go in multiple directions, but each takes 10 minutes. The east of Swindon is ripe for a Costa or something!

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

They were quite quick to respond, or at least not awful. One thing which is always funny is the team they send out to fix the job are always 10000% better than the ones they had in originally to do the job. False economy at it's finest!

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

I think I wish I had known to be more ruthless with the builder about things we wanted changed, fixed or adapted. Things are starting to go wrong (not huge issues) with things I think I should have pushed for more at the time of first moving in. At the time it is so stressful and you just want to settle, but you really do need to push for things if they are not quite right as they can come back to bite you.

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

There are no shops yet. One pub very close but it’s a hungry horse, not where I would choose to go. Another pub walking distance but I don’t go. Very good proximity to countryside, main routes in/out of town. Parking for flats is very limited, most houses / flats have multiple cars. Resident Facebook group is awful and people are very rude / indirect to others on there - nimby. People look down on those who live in the flats.

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

I have had a reply to one issue, another issue has been ignored with no resolution.

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

Noise from upstairs neighbour is unbearable

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

Overall Badbury Park is a good place to live. The design incorporates lots of green spaces with two childrens playparks. There is ample parking and little anti social behaviour or traffic noise.

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

We are not currently under a building management company.

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

Spend lots of time snagging! You won’t get the chance again

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

Currently we have no local shops built on site, that includes bars and restaurants. Within walking distance there are two pubs, one nice, one not so nice. There are open spaces on the site, but there seems to be some strange decision-making as to the design of these as they cannot really be used by anyone. There is currently one park; for the huge size of the development I would suggest at least one more is needed. Transport here is ideal, just off the A419 heading north, and the M4. Overall quality of life on our street is fine; parking isn't too bad but again there is a slight design flaw in terms of the width of the road, which means that if any large vehicles attempt to get down here it can be a challenge. Bizarre issue in the 21st century and a bit of a safety risk! Traffic noise and anti-social behaviour are all fine here, sometimes there's one household that plays music quite loud 'til quite late, but it's not really a big issue. No issues with bin collections either, however tis raises a separate issue of there being only one bin on the entire site. There must be over 2,000 homes here and people are always out walking. Why we cannot have a few more bins dotted around the complex I'll never know. Overall it's a nice place to live, we just really lack amenities; hopefully they will follow in upcoming work.

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

The cost of the council tax; it's ridiculously high.

What is the best feature of your home:

The size of our bedrooms is the best feature, whilst we also have a large kitchen diner which is a great feature.