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Mum’s nightmare living in shadow of Goscote House demolition work
A Leicester resident says she has had no peace in the two years since work began to demolish Goscote House. Leicester City Council first decided to knock down Leicester’s tallest residential building in 2018, with work starting to clear out the Highfields block in 2021 ready for the demolition phase.
Cerone Newton, 35, and her daughter, Jaida-Jean Smith, eight, live in Willow Court next Goscote House. Their garden backs onto the demolition site.
Miss Newton, who has limited mobility due to a problem with her hip and often cannot leave the house, said her life has become an absolute nightmare. The work often starts early in the morning, waking her up, and makes her house shake to the point where things fall off the walls and a crack has opened in her kitchen, she claims.
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Leicester City Council said work is almost finished and the site is expected to be handed back to them at the end of June. The demolition team has taken great care to minimise disruption and communicated with neighbours, the authority added.
“I’ve had no peace for years, our house is shaking, things fall off the walls, we’re getting cracks,” Miss Newton told LeicestershireLive. “I now have a line through my kitchen, it was not there before.
“It’s because of the shaking. I’ve reached the point where some days it drives me absolutely crazy.
“They’ve started work at 6.45 in the morning before. They sometimes work weekends. As soon as they get here they turn the machinery on. From about 7am you have generators on and working.
“When you’re getting woken up because you can hear heavy machinery, that’s not nice. It used to startle me a lot. I’m more used to it now.”
One day the close was left with no water for six hours due to an incident on site, she said. She added: “I’m sat in the house with no water for six hours, I can’t go to the toilet, I can’t even make a drink.”
The situation is also having an impact on her daughter’s wellbeing, she said: “My daughter said to me ‘I can’t do this any more’. Her bedroom is at the back, some days she doesn’t even want to be in my house.
“She can’t cope with the constant noise. She can’t go out in the garden, she’s petrified of the machinery. We can’t use our back gardens anyway because there is dust everywhere.”
Miss Newton said she had contacted both the council and her housing association about the disruption to her life. The council visited the site and things quietened down initially, she claimed, but then the noise slowly picked back up again. Her housing association, PA Housing, allegedly told her the complaint was not with them, but with the local authority.
“We’re living an absolute nightmare right now, but nobody cares,” Miss Newton added. “Did no one think about how our lives would be disrupted?
“I’ve been arguing with [PA Housing] for two years about this. I’ve had enough. But they just say we have to take it up with the council.
“I pay them rent. The council would have gone to them about this. Why have they not helped us or made it clear at the start what this would put us through? I would have fought this, everyone in this close would have, if they’d known.
“Our lives have been disrupted for years. Why are we paying full rent to have our things fall off our walls, to have our homes shaken, to live with no peace?”
PA Housing told LeicestershireLive it is sorry for the disruption its tenants have faced and accepts it should have done more to support them when first approached. The association said it will send someone to visit Miss Newton and inspect the damage to her home.
Miss Newton said the situation had gotten so bad that she had considered moving. However, her mobility issues mean she needs to be close to shops, her doctor and her daughter’s school.
“I’m disabled, I have walking aids,” she said. “Where I live, the shop down the road if I need something they will bring it to mine.
“My neighbours if I’m ever really unwell they’ll look after my daughter. My doctor’s is 30 second away, my daughter school is down the road. I didn’t want to leave, I don’t think I should have to.”
Simon Nicholls, housing head of service at the city council said work on the site is almost complete. He added: “The demolition team has taken great care to minimise disruption and communicated well with neighbouring residents, and as a result of their careful management of the site very few complaints have been received over this 18-month period.
“These include complaints about dust from residents in Maidstone Road early on in the demolition process, and systems were put in place to reduce the dust, and the properties’ windows were cleaned. Operating hours for the site are 8am to 5.30pm Monday to Friday and we are satisfied this has been adhered to. We’ve had no complaints about the generator or about work starting early, and our noise control team has also had no complaints.
“We can confirm that a water pipe was damaged during the site clearance, which Seven Trent responded to on the same day. We are sorry for the inconvenience this caused.”
“We appreciate that the demolition work will inevitably have had an impact on nearby residents and we very much appreciate their patience and co-operation over the past 18 months,” he added. “We are pleased to say that work is now taking place to tidy the site ready to hand it back to us at the end of June, when we can make a proper assessment of the space available and start to plan how it can best be used.”
Sally-Anne Underhill, head of housing services at PA Housing, said: “We’re sorry our resident is facing disruption from neighbouring demolition works. This is not a PA Housing construction site, but it is clear this is having a significant impact on our tenant’s life. We should have done more to help when our tenant first contacted us with their concerns and we apologise for that.
“To help put this right, we are arranging to send a surveyor to review the impact on our tenant’s home. We will follow up with the local authority and the developer as needed, based on our surveyor’s report.
“In addition, our Neighbourhood Co-ordinator will also arrange to visit our tenant to discuss access to their garden and to help as needed in their discussions with Leicester City Council. In the meantime, any concerns residents have over noise or disruption from the construction site should also be reported to Leicester City Council’s Environmental Health team.”
LeicestershireLive has approached the company overseeing the work DSM Demolition for a comment.
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