Family's dream home goes up in smoke

From the archive, first published Saturday 31st Mar 2007.

A family's dream home has gone up in smoke - before they had even moved in.

A blaze was started in the kitchen of the new build at Lime Vale Way, Buttershaw.

The fire spread through to the living room and demolished the staircase up to the first floor.

Police officers called firefighters and two pumps from Odsal attended Miller Homes' Millfields development site at 11pm on Friday night, March 30.

The home had been purchased and the new occupants were due to move in next week.

Crew manager David Flynn said: "There was extensive damage to the kitchen and the fire spread to the front room. It is more than likely it was done deliberately, there is really no other reason. The kitchen will have to be rebuilt and the staircase. There was extensive damage to the house, the whole house will need to be redecorated. I think people have broken in and have been messing about and proba-bly caused the fire with paper and matches. It started in the kitchen."

Officers were at the scene for a couple of hours. Managing director for Miller Homes Yorkshire, Steve Birch, commented: "The real victims here are the customers, who were due to move in this week.

"We will do everything we can to assist police with their en-quiries and we will hopefully be getting on to the site as soon as possible to put everything right for our customers. We will get them in as soon as we can."