A man said to me last night “This will be the biggest thing to hit Dinnington since the pit closed” and I think he’s right.

Since the pit closed Dinnington has done much to pull itself up by its bootstraps, new houses, new shops, new industry where the pit once stood, a new library and primary school. The main street bears the scars of the recessions, but that’s no surprise, it’s the same everywhere.

New people has meant that the basic services we all depend on has had to stretch itself to cope and we hear many tales from people who struggle to get a doctors or dentists appointment. The roads get busier every year as our village slowly goes through its growing pains on the way to becoming a town.

Rotherham Council want to rush this process along by building 1300 houses over the next 15 years. To achieve this they have turned to the housing developers whose eyes have fell not on the brownfield sites in need to regeneration, but on Dinnington and Anston’s picturesque countryside. The greenbelt.

They propose to put at least 700 of these new houses onto virgin countryside, but in a rather sinister move will be re-zoning enough land for up to 3000. Their target is Dinnington East, the countryside off Lakeland Drive and bordered by Woodsetts Road and Swinston Hill Road. This is prime agricultural land and is used daily by local residents who have formed a network of dozens of footpaths over the last 30-40 years.

None of this bothers the developers or the Council however, despite opposition from local borough councillors and the town council they have ignored thousands of local objections and pressed ahead with their plan.

Accompanying the plan are some proposed improvements to the infrastructure of the town, however no money is promised to deliver them, not a bean. In fact only this month the Council cut our library opening hours and threatened to close the Council building where many local residents go for help and services. Our bus service also remain strictly “rural”

Come on Rotherham Council, if we are going to have the houses and the people give us the means to support them!

And leave us with the beautiful countryside that we love!