Housing giant Barratt is set to demolish 36 new homes on an estate in Cambridge after finding faults in the foundations.

Local paper the Cambridge Independent first revealed the problems on the Darwin Green site where Barratt David Wilson Homes Cambridgeshire is building a new community of nearly 1,600 homes.

A spokesperson for Barratt David Wilson Homes Cambridgeshire said: “As a five-star housebuilder we have an extensive quality assurance process and during inspections we found that a small number of unoccupied properties at our Darwin Green development did not meet our usual high standards.

“Unfortunately, the most effective course of action at this stage is to demolish the properties and rebuild them. We have apologised to the customers affected and understand their frustrations, but we are doing all that we can to lessen the impact of this for them.

“The most important thing is that the homes we build for our customers are of the highest quality possible and this means spotting any mistakes and putting them right, which is what we are doing here.”