Category Scores
Park Gate features a mix of studios and one and two-bedroom apartments. These bring together suburban comfort and urban convenience, minutes from Birmingham. Also, the development has excellent transport links to Birmingham city centre. As well as this, and is in a prime position to benefit from the Sheldon Park on it’s doorstep.
In addition, each home at Park Gate features bespoke designs. Large windows fill them with light and create airy living spaces which residents can make their own. Likewise, open-plan designs make each apartment customisable. Similarly, residents can enjoy communal facilities including a gym, a rooftop work out area and a shared terrace with views over the surrounding area.
Reviews
Write a ReviewUpload PhotosAvoid and never purchase or rent with Alliance Living
Loud music, shouting from drunk and druged residents throughout the night. It is a disgrace, reception staff are unhelpful and miserable. Some of the corridors stink soon there will be rats. Black flies coming through the vents into the apartments.
Please tell us what you like and dislike about this area:
What a shame, advertised as being luxury but it is far from that. Expensive bills, criminal activity
Please share one thing (or more) which you wish you had known before you moved in:
Electricity bills, security and loud neighbours.
How has the building management responded to any problems or issues you have raised:
Non rtn calls, customer service is none existence.
Manager Response
Hello,
I am the new General Manager overseeing the Alliance City Living portfolio. We have just recently taken up our subscription with Homeviews and are therefore now able to see our reviews and respond accordingly to the feedback given.
I am very sorry that you have felt compelled to write the review you have based on your experiences. This is clearly not the experience we expect and for this we sincerely apologise. Because of the time lapse between your review and now I think its only right that I offer the opportunity for you to meet me on site to discuss this matter further. Please let me know if this is something that you would like to do?
Your feedback is very important to us and both myself and the team on site would love the opportunity to try and turn this around for you.
Kind Regards
Ian Shoreman
The overall quality of our flat, that is fit and finish, quality of appliances as well as sound insulation can only be described as poor.
I have started my ‘adventure’ with Alliance City Living in September of 2020 when I moved in with my partner to a brand new ‘Luxury’ apartment in Park Gate (Birmingham). Since then, a countless number of issues, small and large, made for a most dreadful renting experience I have ever had.
To start with, the outrageous usage of electricity in our flat means we have paid almost £2000 in 6 months just to keep the place warm (2 bed, newly build flat). No one seems to be able to get to the bottom of this.
The overall quality of our flat, that is fit and finish, quality of appliances as well as sound insulation can only be described as poor. At the moment, a number of these issues (bear in mind this flat is brand new) are still outstanding.
Moving on to safety, criminal activity on the carpark is rampant. In a span of a month a motorbike and two bicycles were stolen. A party flat on the 4th floor attracts an ‘interesting’ sort of individuals who can be seen (and heard) running around the halls. To the best of my knowledge this issue has been raised with the management and typically other than assurances, nothing has been done.
The fibre broadband is available via a company you have never heard of, 4th Utility. Far more expensive and significantly slower than other fibre providers I have dealt with (BT, Hyperoptic).
Then there is the value for money proposition. I think anyone can agree £900 a month is not exactly cheap for a flat at the outskirts of Birmingham, especially when such a price comes attached to this many issues. But when you factor in the sky-high electricity bills and financial loss due to property loss (altogether, nearly £2500 at this point) this really resembles more of a scam than a self-respecting rental / property development business.
I should mention at this point we wanted to finish our relationship with Alliance City Living with no hard feelings and given the sheer number of things gone wrong, we asked to be released from our contract early. To our surprise, we were denied this request and virtually all wrongdoing / mishaps were denied. They really do have an excuse for every eventuality.
With that said, we decided to spend the time we have remaining with our wonderful agency by making everyone interested aware of our experience.
AVOID AT ALL COST
Hope you have a wonderful day.
Konrad
Please tell us what you like and dislike about this area:
The area around the development is average for this part of Birmingham with shops and facilities available near by, not that it matters…
Please share one thing (or more) which you wish you had known before you moved in:
The outrages electricity costs and the shocking quality of the flat (for the money)
How has the building management responded to any problems or issues you have raised:
Some, most are still outstanding with new issues popping out every week it seems.
Manager Response
Hello,
I am the new General Manager overseeing the Alliance City Living portfolio. We have just recently taken up our subscription with Homeviews and are therefore now able to see our reviews and respond accordingly to the feedback given.
I am very sorry that you have felt compelled to write the review you have based on your experiences. This is clearly not the experience we expect and for this we sincerely apologise. Because of the time lapse between your review and now I think its only right that I offer the opportunity for you to meet me on site to discuss this matter further. Please let me know if this is something that you would like to do?
Your feedback is very important to us and both myself and the team on site would love the opportunity to try and turn this around for you.
Kind Regards
Avoid. High electricity bills, poor fit and finish, criminal activity in the area, cheap appliances.
The following review is a cautionary tale for anyone looking to rent a property with Alliance City Living. Below you will find a comprehensive review of my experience renting with Alliance City Living. Here are the highlights of what went wrong in a span of 6 months:
Extremely high electricity usage (over £1800 in less than 6 months)
Very poor fit and finish
Criminal activity on premises (personally lost over £500 worth due to theft)
Shocking sound insulation (you can hear people walking in a corridor in every corner of our flat)
On-site staff polite but unable to resolve any issues
Many of the promised features and services currently unavailable
Very cheap appliances (broken hob after 4 months of usage)
And all this pleasure for over £900 per calendar month.
To start with, when we moved in September we started to notice little quirks of the flat (which we must’ve omitted during the viewing being amazed by how much was included in the price; concierge, secure car park, gym, security and a rooftop terrace), we started to notice smaller and bigger things: lack of grouting in the bathroom, improperly assembled furniture, uninsulated drain pipe in the kitchen causing hell a lot of noise, drafty windows, horribly loud corridor, radiators with a wrong wiring (in order to switch off the radiator in our bedroom you have to go to the bedroom next door and vice versa), damaged windows’ glaze (windows in a bedroom and living room were covered in black gunk) – we have immediately raised this issues with the staff and wanted them to rectify them since the flats were meant to be finished to the highest standards and clearly weren’t. The problems still persist, despite the fact we have raised them 6 months ago. They have managed to rectify only windows, however attempted it 3 times, first time we were given less than 12 hrs notice so we weren’t able to arrange the necessary time off work, second time when we have managed to make the arrangements window fitters never turned up, and third time, window fitters turned up and changed the windows only to find out that the window in one of the bedroom has been installed improperly and accumulates outrageous amounts of the humidity in between the glazes.
When we’ve received our first bill we were shocked to the core, the electricity usage exceeded the EPC over three times and we were again met by the staff’s reluctant response. We’re currently 8 weeks into our dispute with Scottish Power and the situation still remains unresolved. The concierge arranged for us a visit of a Construction Manager – who apart from being very rude and unmannered person didn’t provide us with any information, furthermore all the information provided by him were clashing, proving his incompetency. He quickly advised us to switch off the boiler as this was supposed to be the reason for our high electricity usage only to back out from this plan after running a quick test of actually switching the boiler off and noticing this doesn’t affect the smart meter, then proceeded into denial claiming 400 pounds per month are compeletely normal for a 2 bedroom flat, claiming it’s merely of fraction of what he pays. Clearly not a reasonable explanation, we were informed he was involved in the construction of the building and therefore has its stake in maintaining its reputation. We have been presented with conflicting facts and after his visit we have never heard back from Alliance City Living in regards to this matter. More than that, we were later told by the staff that indeed, our bills seem ridiculously high compare to the other same size and same occupancy flats.
In the meantime I have been trying to contact the EPC assessor who conducted the assessment of this flat only to found out his phone number written on the EPC is non existent and the company isn’t interested in registering the complaint. Only today – 8th of March we have been advised by the company that a third party assessor will re-access the flat and we will be given a new EPC which hopefully will shine some light on this case as nobody really knows why the electricity here is so high!
In addition, at the beginning of February our hob has broken down – we’re still waiting for this to be rectified and we are being dismissed by the staff saying that since the hob is still under a warranty we have to wait for them to deal with that issue and due to COVID this will take longer than expected. It is currently over a month that we’re living without a working hob.
All of that was recently followed by the fact that my bike was stolen from a secured car park, where it was locked with a D-lock in a bike storage area. At this point we were told by the security that they’re not present on site and they’re available only on the phone-call if you see any suspicious activity (as if a motorbike which was stolen a week ago wasn’t enough) or as I was told by the Property Manager ‘if you forget your keys to the building’.
Not to mention that since we have joined Facebook Group of the residents we have learned about the problems of the other residents, loud parties on the 4th floor, drugs presence in the building, teenagers spitting out through the windows and throwing the cigarette ends on the balconies of other residents as well as other thefts on the premises.
It has all escalated to the point when we wanted to leave the tenancy and never again have anything to do with Alliance City Living, however we have been recently informed they are not willing to release us from the contract.
In my opinion, this is far from a ‘luxury living’ experience and if I had a chance to go back and never deal with these people I would’ve stayed away from this company.
If you’re a working adult, who likes peace and quiet, concierge who will greet you with a smile rather than a CCTV footage of your bike being stolen and want a hassle-free life – stay away from this property. There are cheaper apartment buildings available with way better flats and service than this.
Please share one thing (or more) which you wish you had known before you moved in:
In my opinion, this is far from a ‘luxury living’ experience and if I had a chance to go back and never deal with these people I would’ve stayed away from this company.
What is the best feature of your home:
There aren’t best features of this home, the idea was brilliant, however the execution was absolutely terrible.
