A FAMILY has been left homeless after being told at the eleventh hour their brand new property in St Ann's Chapel would not be ready for occupation — because the garden is contaminated with arsenic. Beverley and Donald Coulton and their three children were all due to move into their house at Foster's Meadow, Whiterocks this week — but now face an eight-week delay because all the gardens and patios on the former mine site have to be dug up. Having originally been told the house, a shared equity property, would be ready in February, the Coultons now fear they will lose their mortgage offer and their home. Mrs Coulton said: 'We are currently renting a property and the new tenants are moving in this weekend. 'I am running around like a headless chicken trying to find somewhere to go. Even I know that there is arsenic everywhere around this area — so why was the contaminated soil not dealt with before?' Mrs Coulton said her 100% mortgage offer had already been extended and would only be kept open for another week. 'Given the state of the mortgage market, if we lose this offer it is unlikely we will get another one,' she said. The ten shared ownership homes are being built by Sarsen Housing Association. Mrs Coulton said this was the first home for the family which had a garden and the children were really looking forward to it. 'We have had numerous delays but last week when we made our final viewing it looked like everything was finished. It was then that the builders dropped the bombshell.' Calstock parish councillor Mike Greenwood said: 'This is a brownfield mine site and everybody has been aware of the problems of contaminated soil from the start. 'It is no surprise, it is just pure incompetence on someone's part. Why has no-one kept tabs on what is happening down there? Caradon has a diabolic record of this kind of thing.' He said a similar situation had occurred at Sandhill in Gunnislake, where gardens were found to be contaminated and a mine shaft opened up in one. A spokesperson for Caradon District Council said remediation work on contaminated land was a condition of planning permission on the site — but the district council was not in charge of supervising it. The spokesperson said it was up to the developers to do the work and provide an inspection report from a third party to say it had been done. It was only then that a completion certificate could be issued by the council's building control department. A spokeswoman for Sarsen Housing Association said the building contractor had failed to lay a protective membrane — a method for dealing with contaminated soil — when the ground was prepared for building the homes, although this had been previously agreed by the builder and local council. 'For health and safety reasons, it is essential that site excavation is done to replace all top soil and include a protective membrane,' she said. 'We will be monitoring the situation very closely to make sure our building contractor carries out the work to a high standard and as quickly as possible. 'We sympathise with the disappointment and frustration that our prospective buyers and tenants must be feeling and we will do everything we can to keep them and their mortgage lenders up-to-date on progress. Allan Bland, building manager for the contractor Ian Williams, said: 'Due to an administration error, unfortunately the project team, although they did remove the original soil and replace it with new top soil, did not install the membrane required. 'As soon as we noticed this, we contacted the Environment Agency to determine how we could resolve this as quickly as possible for residents to reduce any inconvenience.' Mr Bland said independent tests would be undertaken to ensure that the work was completed to the highest standards: 'In the meantime we have revised our administration procedure to ensure that the error will not occur again,' he said.