King- Size “White Elephant” – unless he can Go Ahead.

April 1964

South Yorkshire Times April 18.

A King- Size “White Elephant” – unless he can Go Ahead.

Conisbrough contract runs up against a curious situation.

Conisbrough building contractor, Mr Thomas Dunford, is likely to be landed with a king-size “white elephant” unless Doncaster Rural Council, or a higher authority, allowing to build on a piece of land at Clifton.

Mr Dunford, of Clifton Lane, Conisbrough, applied for permission to build himself a house of natural stone even before he bought the intended site – a three quarters of an acre plot off Common Lane Clifton.

That was in 1958, when Mr Dunford was told by the Rural Council that he would have to reapply 18 months later as the land was likely to be affected by mining subsidence.

Thinking that would be the only objection to his project, he did reapply after two years, only to be told that he could not build, as development “would tend to encourage sporadic growth of the village into the rural area, to the detriment of greenbelt provisions.”

Yet now, after his third application earlier this year had been refused on “ribbon development” grounds – “I just don’t know what they mean by that,” says Mr Dunford – Mr Dunford is, Intel, putting the finishing touches to a friend’s newly built home on the very edge of his plot where provision has been refused.

Would have thought no more about it.

Mr Dunford told the “South Yorkshire Times” this week, “if they had refused me permission because of the greenbelt in 1958. I should have thought no more about it and let it drop, Bert, it wasn’t until subsequent letters that they put me Haugh. After being told of the mining subsidence, I naturally thought that was the only objection, and that my second application would be granted.

“After all, if the land was in the greenbelt the second time, it was in the greenbelt the first time,” he added.

“The land is too far away from home to cultivate or to keep livestock on. In other words, it’s a complete waste, he said.

Mr Dunford said Rural Council officials had held to site meetings before since he first applied for building commission. He wonder why such meetings should be held when the question of greenbelt provisions could have been decided from a map. He now plans to write his MP about the situation in what he described as “this silly waste.”