A house builder has been criticised for building "rabbit hutch" flats and then renting out the ground floor of the new development to a self-storage company.
Homeowners could end up paying £1,400 a year or more to store their wellington boots, sports equipment, children's toys and Christmas decorations.
Barratt Homes has just finished its New South Quarter development in Croydon, a collection of 800 modern flats starting from £180,000.
The smallest of the one-bedroom homes are about 350 square feet in size, with limited space for owners to store their belongings. Barratt has got around that problem, however, by renting the entire basement and ground floor of the major block of flats to Access Self Storage, a company that offers home owners their own lock-up.
This is the first time that a house-builder has teamed up with a self-storage company and comes just a few months after a damning report by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (Cabe) suggested newbuilds are increasingly cramped "rabbit hutches", with many owners unhappy about the mean dimensions of their homes.
The Cabe report interviewed 2,500 owners of private new homes who had moved into a property build between 2003 and 2007. Of those questioned, 57 per cent said there was not enough storage space, with half saying they did not have enough space for their furniture.
Tom Bolton at Cabe said: "There is clearly an issue here if people need to rent out storage space alongside their new build flats. Housebuilders should listen to their customers and realise their needs are not being provided at the moment."
Nick Fenton, the managing director of Barratt Kent, said he was negotiating with Access to allow residents of the New South Quarter development to receive a discount for their storage units.
And he denied that the flats lacked adequate storage space. "We're designing units which are acceptable to purchasers, otherwise they wouldn't be buying them. We don't get too many complaints about lack of storage," Until now perhaps......
Just don't get a cat, as you'll not have enough room to swing it !
Until the next time,
Mr Jackson.
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