Doncaster Council’s planning committee approved a scheme by developer TIRTLR 10 to convert Mexborough’s former Coltran Mill into housing. The mill, on Church Street, will be converted into 60 luxury apartments with 26 homes also on-site. Some 51 of the total properties will be one-bedroom apartments, with the remainder being two and three-bedroom homes.

An area of public space will be included on-site, however this is below the recommended 10 per cent in the council’s development plan. The scheme aims to retain as much of the site’s heritage as possible, with homes designed to look like cottages of workers who would have served the mill.

It will have an emphasis on sustainability, with a ‘sustainable drainage strategy’ and high energy efficiency ratings. Nine letters of objection to the application were received from four individual households. The main issue given was parking; each home has two parking spaces while eight visitor spaces are included in total.

Other reasons included vehicular access to the site due to traffic in the area and detrimental impact on the surrounding historic buildings. Coltran Mill had recently been selected to be included on Doncaster’s new Local Heritage List due to its history.

This creates an extra consideration when selected sites are involved in planning applications. Planning officers ruled that the application was a worthy use of the building, particularly as previous applications had involved demolishing it entirely. The committee ruled to approve the application, with one vote against and one abstention.

Coltran Mill: Historic Yorkshire mill to be turned into luxury apartments and housing