Coal Authority in huge payout as house sinks into mine shaft
AMIDLAND business boss has won hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation from The Coal Authority after his “palace” home subsided into a mine shaft.
Ian White will receive a “down payment” of £670,000 within 28 days after walls cracked and floors and window frames warped at Tidbury Castle Farm, near Coventry.
The full amount has yet to be assessed, but Mr White, managing director of Tom White Waste Ltd, which recycles all Coventry’s domestic rubbish, is claiming £954,000.
Tidbury Castle Farm, valued at £1.5 million and featuring a cinema, games room complex and stables, was only built in 2008.
But London’s Upper Tribunal heard that subsidence had left walls no longer vertical and even the electric security gates had stopped working.
The floors sloped to such an extent that doors would “swing open or closed of their own accord”.
The property was bought by 48-year-old Ian from his grandparents in 2002. The old farmhouse was demolished and replaced with the current state-of-the-art building.
The tribunal heard that cracks began to appear in 2010, caused by mine workings almost half-a-mile below ground. The shaft was excavated in 2010 from Daw Mill Colliery, the last working mine in the Warwickshire coalfield.
The colliery closed five years ago after a major underground fire.
Now Judge Elizabeth Cooke has ruled that the only option is to demolish and rebuild the main house.
She was “wholly unimpressed” by the authority’s arguments that it was not liable to compensate Ian.
Judge Cooke rejected claims that spending any more than £68,000 on repairs would be “extravagant”.
Mr White was legally entitled to have all the damage “made good to his reasonable satisfaction” at the authority’s expense.
Mr White lived elsewhere for a while “following the breakdown of his marriage”, said the judge. But, when he returned in 2013, he was “astonished and very upset” the extent of the damage.
“The only way to put right the tilt is to demolish and rebuild... It is not extravagant to do so,” added the judge.
Tidbury Castle Farm’s outhouses are equipped with a plant room, annexe flat, cinema, games rooms, two large garages, office, gardener’s store and stable block.
It had been built to “a high standard” and, without the subsidence, the property would have been worth up to £1.5 million in 2014, said the judge.
Mr White’s family company is one of the biggest waste handling businesses in the region and its distinctive red trucks are a familiar sight in Coventry.
Tom White Ltd provides waste management services to, amongst others, Coventry City Council, the Ricoh Arena and Jaguar Land Rover.
Mr White was in Antigua and declined to comment when contacted. to see