A Perthshire councillor has warned potential Carse of Gowrie residents to be aware of who is responsible for green space management before buying a home in one of the area’s new housing estates.
Large scale developments have been built recently in villages along the A90, and people are moving from far and near to purchase a new home.
Housebuilders are regularly required to leave communal open spaces within their developments, but where the maintenance responsibilities lie is often shrouded in confusion.
Conservative councillor Angus Forbes, who represents the Carse of Gowrie, is asking people buying houses in these new estates to get clarification over ownership of communal greenspaces before they commit to the purchase.
This comes after Mr Forbes received an influx of complaints from residents about the unkempt nature of open greenspaces around the Carse of Gowrie.
The areas in particular he has been inundated with complaints about are two pieces of land in Longforgan which are now overgrown and untidy, making residents’ lives “a misery”.
Mr Forbes said: “The recent good weather has meant that communal greenspaces are now growing quickly, many of them are eyesores and are right in front of peoples houses.
“In most cases these parcels of land have never been owned by the council, in fact they were passed on by the developer to private companies after the site was completed.
“These companies, in some cases, have sold them on to private individuals who are taking a gamble that they will eventually get planning permission to build a house on them.
“Whilst the owners do have an obligation to look after the sites, if they refuse to do so, which is happening a lot at the moment, people tend to contact the council as they assume they are the owners whilst the fact is that these are private bits of land owned by individual people who normally don’t live in the area.
“I get complaints at least every week about sites in Longforgan and Inchture.
“I would urge anyone who is buying a house in a new estate to question the developer thoroughly about the ownership of these bits of land, who owns them, who is responsible for maintaining them, how often will they be cut and is there any chance the land would be sold on to a speculator.
“I would also recommend discussing this with your solicitor.”
