Homes & Gardens

Additional charges for certain types of waste will be brought in at Devon's recycling centres from 1 April.

Soil, rubble, tyres, plasterboard and asbestos have been charged for since 2011 but the same rules will now apply for plastic windows, plastic doors or door frames, baths or shower trays, shower screens, insulation materials, roofing felt and plastic downpipes, facias or guttering.

Visitors to recycling centres will be asked for £3.50 for each of these items, £3.50 for a bag or roll of insulation material or roofing felt. Guttering pipes will be charged at £3.50 for...

Help to Buy, the government’s flagship housing scheme, has helped 88,420 people buy a new home (9,045 in the South West) since it was created, new figures have revealed today.

Since the launch of the Help to Buy equity loan and mortgage guarantee schemes:

• 80% of scheme completions have been made by first-time buyers • the average house price has been £185,000, significantly below the national average • Over 80,000 people have bought a home through the scheme • 94% of Help to Buy completions take place outside of London • Over half of Help to Buy completions have been for...

Leading UK housebuilder Charles Church has just 11 properties remaining at its Kings Grove development in Exeter. The site boasts two to five bedroom houses and it is situated on the outskirts of the city, forming part of the Cranbrook community. Picked for its easy access to the M5 motorway, Exeter International Airport and the coast, Kings Grove has 3 bed detached properties available from £255,000 The homes have been carefully designed to complement the local environment, offering a combination of stone, brick and render and roofed in either grey slates or terracotta tiles. They are...

Most people use their shed to store garden equipment, bicycles and even expensive power tools. Yet, often, sheds are fitted with inadequate locks, or no lock at all.

Since June last year, over seventy-one victims in South Devon had their sheds broken into and property stolen. Almost half of these occurred in Teignbridge.

Fourteen sheds were broken into in Torquay and twelve across Ivybride and Kingsbridge. The areas reporting the fewest number of break-ins were Totnes, Dartmouth, Paignton and Brixham.

To reduce this type of crime, Police have teamed with South Devon...