Pensioner risks dying in jail after row with council over stone wall gets out of control
The pensioner knocked down the wall not anticipating a row (Stock image)
BOB JENKINS
A pensioner fears he will die in jail as a dispute with his local council escalates out of control.
Ron Knight, 88, said he would rather be sent to prison than rebuild a stone wall on his land, which the council are claiming is an ancient monument.
It adds that the wall is in a conservation zone and therefore cannot be destroyed without planning permission.
Knight says that far from the wall being an ancient monument, he built it himself in the 1970s.
Ron Knight says he built the stone wall himself in the 1970s (Stock photo)
KATE JEWELL
He also says he was unaware that the wall fell within the boundaries of the conservation area.
"It would be laughable if it wasn’t for the threat of jail that I am now facing," he told The Sun.
"I’ve been fined three times in the six court appearances and each time I’ve refused to pay because I know I’m in the right.
"They can jail me if they want but then who is going to look after my wife who suffers from chronic arthritis and relies on me for her care 24 hours of the day."
He added: "I will never sell this land because it’s mine, they can fine me, imprison me and do whatever they want but I’m not rebuilding that wall.
"And even when I’ve gone I’ll make sure that the land continues to stay within the family."
His daughter Linda fears that the dispute will end up killing the elderly Briton.
She said: "This is now just a vicious vendetta against an old man and which has no public interest to it.
"They won’t be satisfied until they’ve got their way but although he won’t admit it, the stress is killing him.
"Are they going to keep on hounding him until he is dead?"
She said that the cluncil has been "heavy handed" in its dealing with the issue and had unnecessarily refused him retrospective planing permission.
A spokesman for Somerset Council said: "The retrospective planning application was asking for the same requirements as the enforcement notice.
"We have applied the expediency test and public interest test to each step of this case.
"We consider that the creation of the access, necessitating the demolition or removal of a wide section of the historic stonewall and associated engineering work to the land behind, fails to safeguard the established character of the conservation area and has caused unjustified harm to a designated heritage asset."