A housing association has been accused of failing to maintain two estates in Dartmouth following repeated requests from a local councillor to address residents’ complaints.

The Guinness Partnership, which manages about 64,000 homes across England, oversees two estates on Townstal Road, which reportedly house about 300 residents.

According to local councillor Jonathan Hawkins, the housing association has failed to maintain facilities in a good state, despite increasing service charges year on year.

Among the long list of complaints is a neglected children’s playground that has remained closed for months, in addition to a broken boundary fence and an overgrown hedge on a main road.

Despite assurances last month from a Guinness Partnership customer liaison officer that the problems would be fixed, Cllr Hawkins claims nothing has been done to date.

“It's just long-drawn neglect. They are not taking their responsibilities seriously. We have had a number of residents over the last six to seven months complaining about issues,” he said.

“The playground, which has been closed for months now, won't be open until the end of this month. That means all those kids have had the summer holidays and no playground. It’s disgusting.

“I'm annoyed with that and with the general lack of maintenance and care towards their tenants.”

Despite describing a recent meeting with the company’s liaison officer as “productive”, Cllr Hawkins said he was angry at the organisation’s lack of action.

“Year on year, they keep raising their service charges, but the services seem to be getting worse all the time,” he noted.

The failure to maintain the grounds has also become a residents’ bugbear.

“They aren't cutting the hedge on the main road on a regular basis, so push chairs, disabled people, children in prams can't actually walk along it,” he added.

Yvette Green, Guinness Partnership’s customer liaison officer, forwarded her response to this paper.

She apologised to Cllr Hawkins for failing to reply earlier, saying she had “a lot of annual leave booked in August due to the school holidays”, while adding that the playground would be reopened by Friday, August 23.

She also assured residents the other issues would soon be resolved, including repairing the boundary fence “in a month” as well as cutting the hedge back along the main road.

A spokesperson from the Guinness Partnership later responded to requests from this paper, insisting the association “have not ignored any residents’ concerns or complaints”.

In a statement, it said: “We acknowledge there have been some delays to completing some work and we apologise for this. The hedge has already been cut back and will continue to be maintained. The damaged boundary fence is expected to be repaired this week.

“The playground is expected to reopen by the end of this week (safety matting has been on order for some time and is expected to be delivered and installed this week).

“Our service charges reflect the actual cost to deliver services – these have increased in recent years in line with inflation.”