A COUPLE were left fuming after they moved into their brand new £200,000 home – only to find their cars wouldn’t fit in the garage.

The family’s Volvo S40 won’t go in at all while their Ford Fiesta will go in – but there isn’t enough room to open the doors.

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Claire Walker, 37, and partner Andrew Birkhead, 33, complained to housebuilder Persimmon and were told: “You should have checked before you bought the house.”

Claire, a regional health and safety manager for rival housebuilder Bellway Homes, said she couldn’t believe they had been sold a house with a garage they couldn’t use.

“Persimmon said we should have tried to park our cars in the garage before we put down a deposit but who does that?” she said.

“When you buy a three-bedroomed detached family home with a garage you expect the garage to be big enough to get a car into.”

Claire and Andrew, who have a two-year-old son Billy, bought the house in Holly Road, Oxley Park, Scissett, for £209,950 and moved in March.

When the couple complained to Persimmon the company responded insisting the integral garage was “appropriate”.

Claire then got out her measuring tape and researched the size of popular family cars on the internet.

She found that the garage door width of 2m 3cm was too small for eight of the 14 cars she compared.

“Persimmon deemed the size to be appropriate but it’s clearly not,” said Claire.

Including wing mirror width the cars that wouldn’t fit included some of the most popular family cars.

They were: the Ford Focus, VW Golf, Ford Mondeo, BMW 3 Series, Honda Civic, the VW Passat, Volvo V40 and the BMW 5 Series.

The ones which would fit were: the Fiesta, the Vauxhall Astra, the Audi A3, the BMW 1 Series, the Mercedes C Class and the VW Jetta.

But, crucially, the 2m 44cm wall-to-wall width meant that NONE of the cars which could get inside the garage could open their doors wide enough for the driver to get out.

The couple asked Persimmon if they would extend their driveway and skim the walls and lay floorcovering to at least make the space useable.

Persimmon agreed to create the extra parking space but not do anything more with the garage.

Claire, whose Volvo is a company car, said she feared the re-sale value of the house would be hit in the future.

“I have spoken to two local estate agents who say that a garage would put £8,000 on the value of a house,” she said.

“The agents also said that if we were aware that the garage was too small to get a car into we couldn’t advertise the house as having a garage.

“We don’t intend to sell anytime soon – we want to be here 20 years – but the house is an investment and it feels like a poor investment right now.”

Claire, who regularly visits new housing sites as part of her job, has alerted her bosses at Bellway to the potential problem.

For now the ‘garage’ is used to store a drier, two filing cabinets, a lawnmower and a strimmer.

Wayne Gradwell, managing director at Persimmon Homes, said: “As one of the UK’s leading housebuilders it can only be a matter of deep regret to us if any customer is dissatisfied with their new home.

“The garage in question is comparable with new build properties across the UK.

“We continue to work with Miss Walker and Mr Birkhead to try and resolve the situation.”