Rachel Saunders with the warehouse in the background
WHEN a warehouse was built behind a row of houses in Bowerhill, near Melksham, the neighbours experienced a strange side effect.
As the metal frame of the building went up, residents on Duxford Close began to lose their TV signals.
That was in 2006, and now the residents face further disruption after a planning application to extend the warehouse was given permission by West Wiltshire District Council's planning committee on Thursday.
The warehouse belongs to Gompels Healthcare, whose wholesale medical products business is run by Sam Gompels while his brother runs a chemist in Bank Street, Melksham.
The warehouse towers behind the back garden of Rachel Saunders and her husband Lee, who had to pay £175 for a new digital aerial and a booster.
Mrs Saunders said: "It started going wrong when they put the framework up, we just came home from work one day and there was no signal."
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The family wrote to Gompels Healthcare twice to complain and although they were told the company was investigating they have heard nothing since.
Then, just six months after the warehouse went up, they heard the company had submitted an application to extend it.
Margaret and John Eccleston, who live a couple of doors away from the Saunders, started a petition against the extension and collected almost 40 signatures.
Mrs Eccleston said: "We can't get digital and it stopped working as soon as they put the warehouse up. Our main TV only works with a booster and we can only get terrestrial channels, but even then Channel five is fuzzy."
Her husband added: "We were thinking about getting a bigger aerial but why should we when it was fine until the warehouse was built?"
The Bowerhill Action Group and local councillor Roy While contacted Ofcom to get to the bottom of the problem and were told that either a large building being built or new trees were blocking the signal.
Gompels Healthcare agreed to pay the action group £750, which will be distributed between about 12 households who registered their problems with the group.
But this will not cover the full cost to the residents of Duxford Close and other roads nearby, many of whom have had to change their aerials.
It will also not cover the cost of any homes that are affected once the new extension is built.
Cllr Roy While, who supported the application at the planning committee meeting, said: "This is a local business that has done well and expanded and that's what we want to see. It was a question of coming to an arrangement that is really a compromise."
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