Greensquare residents 'deserve better' says councillor

It is under fire from councillors in Malmesbury, Calne and Corsham, as well as Chippenham MP Michelle Donelan.

At Glovers Court in Malmesbury, people have suffered damp, poor heating and leaking pipes in their homes.

Malmesbury councillor Gavin Grant has now hand-delivered a letters to the chief executive of Greensquare and demanded a meeting.

He has been given the date of April 19.

He said: “I was contacted by a vulnerable resident from Glovers Court on Boxing Day in a distressed state about water coming into his home. He reported it on December 19 and Greensquare will likely sort out the problem shortly after Easter. And, frankly, that is a disgrace.

“Greensquare is coming up too often for my liking with comments from residents struggling with damp, inadequate heating systems and leaking pipes.”

He also discovered that tiles have been removed from the roof of Glovers Court without new tiles ready to put on.

In Corsham, town councillor Alun Crockford hit a brick wall when he tried to get answers to issues outside Greensquare’s Kings Avenue properties.

A grassed area was used drivers as a shortcut, resulting in near misses with people walking along the footpath and substantial damage to the grass.

Greensquare responded by putting in boulders to block access, which has been welcomed, but the move has restricted the green space available for families. The boulders are also thought to have damaged a water pipe under the ground.

He said: “This has been a huge challenge to rectify. They ignored the residents for months and stuck their heads in the sand. I lived in a place like Kings Avenue growing up, so I can empathise. The residents have been treated with utter indifference.”

Carly Zimmerman, who lives on Kings Avenue, said it had taken months for customer service teams to listen to her concerns about the problem. She was nearly hit by a car driving on the green back in 2019.

“Their customer service is atrocious. They have a duty of care to their residents but make no proper effort to respond to our concerns,” she said. She was told the boulders cost Greensquare £20,000.

Alun and Carly fought for months to get problems rectified

Michelle Donelan said her inbox remains exceptionally busy with Greensquare complaints . She said: “Greensquare has shown a positive attitude towards acknowledging its failings and has endeavoured to put in place a better system for my office to escalate complaints with them. But the fact remains Greensquare tenants are still being let down.

“I am very grateful to residents who raised the recent issue with parking on the grass in Kings Avenue, Corsham and that the subsequent fix was less than satisfactory. Thanks to the help and persistence of Alun Crockford who continued to keep me updated on the issue there is to be further work to remedy the current placement of boulders and the damage caused when they were initially placed on the green.”

Just this week, the Gazette also received correspondence regarding problems in Calne - where residents say they have “nearly given up” on having problems sorted.

Ken Neale, head of operations at GreenSquare, said: “We always work to address and resolve issues raised by customers as quickly as possible – and prioritise cases involving loss of heating or hot water.

“During lockdown we have provided a reduced maintenance service to help keep customers and colleagues safe and, as a result, have built up a large number of requests for repairs during this period. Our focus is on completing each and every one of these repairs as we restart our full repairs service from this week, and we will be arranging support from external contractors during the next few months to help with this.

“We welcome the meeting with Cllr Grant in April to discuss any specific concerns about Glovers Court. In the meantime, major roof replacement works underway there are in line with our ongoing commitment to increase investment in our existing properties.

“Finally, we have liaised with the local councillor and a small group of residents to agree some follow-up work in Corsham to restrict vehicles accessing open space at Churchill Way. We know there was some concern about the positions of some of the boulders put in place on the green and the condition of the grass which had been affected and will be addressing this next week.”