Garages to be demolished after Peterborough housing association built them on land it does not own

Cross Keys Homes has apologised after discovering its mistake which will affect properties in Fellowes Gardens, Fletton.

A spokeswoman for Cross Keys said: “Five years ago as part of our work with the city council, we built garages at Fellowes Gardens to help improve the amenities there.

“Unfortunately, it has recently come to light that some of the land in question was not in our ownership nor was it owned by the city council either.

“We are sincerely sorry for this mistake and the inconvenience this news brings to the four residents who have been affected.

“As soon as we became aware of the situation, we immediately made a very competitive offer to buy the land from the receiver, which was sadly refused leaving us with no alternative but to demolish the four garages and return the land to its previous state.

“We are working very hard to help residents remove their possessions from the garages, find alternative garage parking for them and revert the land back to its original appearance.

“Whilst this is an extremely rare situation for us, we are nevertheless disheartened that we have had no other option in this case.

“We can assure residents and ward councillors that we did our very best to come to a reasonable agreement with the receiver to rectify this unfortunate oversight on our part before having to take this action, but unfortunately proved to be impossible.

“We will continue to work closely with the residents to do all we can to ease the situation and again offer our sincere apologies.”