Residents talk of chaos and mess around house being built without permission
Neighbours stressed out by "chaotic" building work on a house that is being erected without permission have spoken of relief at news it will be demolished.
Gurwinder Singh was ordered by Walsall Council's planning committee to take down the partially-completed four-bedroom house on the corner of Sandringham Avenue and Arundel Road in Willenhall.
At a meeting on Thursday, April 7, members heard how permission had been granted for an extension to the house, but, instead, the applicant demolished the original property and started constructing a new one last year.
The subsequent work over 16 months had been described by neighbours and residents living nearby as "chaos", "upsetting" and "a real mess".
One woman living next to the house, who didn't want to be named, described having suffered from stress and having to pay out thousands of pounds to get help after the work began next to her home.
She said: "I've had to pay for an injunction to get them to stop damaging my house, as they managed to put a rolled steel joint (RSJ) through my bedroom wall as I was sitting in bed.
"They've caused a lot of damage to my home, but it's been the mental stress which has been the worst, from hearing them drilling holes in my wall to seeing them using the back garden as a latrine.
"I'm not going to gloat about them losing their home, but all I want is for my home to be repaired as there should never have been any damage in the first place and I feel like I have been left out of pocket for something which was not my fault."
The four-bedroom property was left in a state of incompleteness while the planning committee was deciding its fate, although local resident Ron Jenkins said it had been a mess all the way through.
He said: "I've been a builder for 50 years and I've never seen a job as bad as this, with RSJ beams in the wrong place and the roof sagging.
"The bricklayer seems to to be the only one who knew what he was doing as his work is good, but the rest is a mess as they clearly didn't know what they were doing."
Another resident, who didn't want to be named, said the last 16 months had been utter chaos and said that while she welcomed the news, she had mixed feelings about the fate of the land.
She said: "We want to know what they're going to do with it as they keep saying it'll be a green space, but we want to know what that means.
"We've had our drive blocked at times and we've seen the effect it's had on other people, so it's been real chaos all the way through."
