A couple in Blunsdon have applied to Swindon Borough Council to remove a planning condition that has technically forbidden them from living in their own home since they moved in.
Mr and Mrs Ward's bungalow, Happy Acre, on Kingsdown Lane, was granted planning permission in 1969 on the condition it could only be occupied by someone working in agriculture. The couple have lived there for ten years without, as far as is publicly known, farming anything. In June 2026 they were granted a Certificate of Lawfulness confirming the breach had gone on long enough to become legally untouchable, and the current application asks the council to delete the condition altogether and let the bungalow be a normal house. A similar attempt in the 1980s failed. Blunsdon Parish Council raised no objection last month.
The Wards' agent has argued the condition serves no planning purpose, pointing out that several new houses have been approved along the same lane, including one next door, none of which were asked to keep a goat. It is understood the council is expected to agree, on the grounds that nobody involved has grown so much as a radish since the Wilson government.
A council spokesperson said the application would be considered through the usual process, which in this instance has taken fifty seven years and counting.
"I'm not one to gossip," said Brenda Pask, 72, of Old Town, who has lived there since before it was old, "but I do know somebody who had a similar thing with a shed. Ron's brother kept his mother-in-law's caravan on a plot in Stratton for fifteen years under an agricultural condition, grew one rhubarb in 1991, and said that counted as 'ongoing use.' The council believed him. You'd never get away with it now. Now they want to see your rhubarb."
She added that she did not see why anyone needed permission to keep living somewhere they already lived. "Ron used to say the council would ask you for planning permission to breathe if they thought they could charge you for the application form. Three pound fifty, it is now, just to post a letter. In his day you wrote to the planning office and they wrote back saying no, and that was that. Nobody waited fifty seven years for an answer. Except British Rail, obviously."
Gary Tench, Area Manager at Tench Paper Solutions in Westlea, said the story had resonated with him personally. "Our Westlea unit was only meant to be temporary, 1987, portakabin, six months tops while they sorted the main building. Thirty nine years later, here we are, still 'temporary,' still no working radiator. I raised it with Julie from accounts and she said maybe I should apply for a Certificate of Lawfulness. I said Julie, I'd settle for a certificate of warmness." He said the Wards' situation proved that persistence paid off. "Sometimes the system just needs you to keep quietly existing until it gives in. That's basically my whole career."
Under the proposed change, Happy Acre would become an ordinary residential property with no agricultural strings attached, meaning the Wards could finally stop keeping a rake by the door in case anybody official called round.
The rake, when approached, declined to comment, on the grounds that its services were no longer required.