THEY want to build a bypass to take heavy traffic out of Darlington. But they want it to thunder through a garden village, designed specifically for peaceful, healthy living. Many Darlington people think that’s not very sensible. In Part One of this series of articles, available here, we discussed the flaws in the public consultation process for this “Darlington Northern Link Road” (DNLR) and the birth of a coalition of angry community groups, called ROOTS (Residents Opposed to Overdevelopment and Traffic Schemes). Here’s what happened next.
Make that coffee to go
Our disparate campaigners met up at the Landside Café in Teesside Airport to await the meeting which had been arranged by Silke Koltermann Oldridge. Silke, who is responsible for the DNLR consultation process, reports to Jonathan Spruce, Director of Infrastructure at the Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA). We would all have been watching the clock but, oddly, there wasn’t one in the entire cavernous, but deserted, departure lounge.
SWAG
There were representatives of residents’ groups, members of the Skerningham Woodland Action Group (SWAG) and others, including a Green Party borough councillor. The numbers were supplemented by journalists Ray
Casey and Peter Greenwood, the authors of this article and both North East Bylines correspondents.
Always come prepared
We pored over a list of the issues which would be raised with the TVCA, concerning both the online consultation process and the public meetings held at various venues. It was a long list. We headed to the TVCA office at 5pm.
Call to order
First agenda item was the obligatory selfie, taken by Richie Barlow, a member of the Whinfield Green Party. Jonathan Spruce can be seen in the light blue shirt on the right hand side of the table. Silke Koltermann Oldridge is out of shot behind the camera. Dave Clark, a member of the Barmpton &Skerningham Preservation Group, and the spokesman for today’s group, can be seen at the far end of the table on the right hand side.
Let’s get down to business
Spruce didn’t waste time on introductions and handed the floor over to the room. We only had an hour. Dave Clark took the floor and started listing the problems.
You wouldn’t want to be starting from here
The number one issue with the online survey was the sparse information provided by the maps of the main DNLR route options. Below is an example:
Which way is up?
You can see from this that, if you don’t know north Darlington and the surrounding countryside intimately, it’s difficult to orientate yourself. Dave Clark asked Jonathan why rather large features – such as Skerningham Woods and the proposed 4,500-home garden village – were missing. The routes may affect both for all people knew.
Mentioning the unmentionable
When Dave mentioned the possibility of including the village, Jonathan replied that this consultation is about the DNLR, not a garden village. Well, he’s technically correct, but 4,500 big houses scattered in enclaves all over the mapped area are not a small matter. But, anyway, maybe some public footpaths and even some prominent landmarks might have helped? Alex Swainston, leader of the “No to the Darlington Northern Link Road” pressure group, asked why the map designers didn’t at least use Ordnance Survey extracts, as most surveys of this type do.
Gunning Principles
Dave Clark went on to mention the Gunning Principles, which guide public consultations. They dictate that there must always be sufficient information to enable “intelligent consideration”. The information provided must be “easily
interpretable”. In fact, the TVCA ensured that more detailed maps were available at the public consultation events. But that’s of no use to interested residents looking online.
A matter of interpretation
Jonathan Spruce argued that the maps met the Gunning Principles because they were “appropriate for this stage of the consultation”. He believed that, at this stage, more detailed drawings could be open to misrepresentation by
some individuals. Let’s hope that the people who saw more detailed maps at the public venues did not misinterpret them. As mentioned in Part One of this series, our group produced its own map of
the DNLR, born out of frustration with the TVCA’s efforts. Here it is:
Nudge theory
Dave wondered whether the TVCA might be trying to gently “nudge” Darlington residents into choosing what’s called the “Do minimum” route. Why? Well, two reasons: firstly that route closely resembles the Skerningam Garden Village “distributor road” – a quiet, walkable, cycleable village lane linking all the clumps of houses together. It was proposed by Lichfields planning consultancy as part of the Skerningham Garden Village masterplan. This masterplan, produced on behalf of Skerningham Estates Ltd, was adopted into Darlington Borough Council’s “local plan”. The masterplan can be found on the council’s website, with a disclaimer that it was produced by private developers, not the council, though the council owns half the shares in the garden village. Here’s an excerpt from the masterplan, showing the full scope of the proposed garden village development
This is Darlington
For guidance, ‘A’ roads are shown in red on the above map. The A167 can be seen running north/south on the left hand side of the map. The A1150 can be seen running from west to east, from a junction with the A167 on the left, to the Little Burdon junction with the A66 in the bottom right. The light brown areas are estates, totalling up to 4,500 homes.
This seems familiar
So what’s the second reason for gently guiding the public towards that “Do minimum” road? We’ve already discussed the startling resemblance between the quiet garden village distributor road planned by Skerningham Estates in 2017 and the current “Do minimum” option for the bypass. But Skerningham Estates has got a bigger ace up its sleeve: The support of one of the most powerful politicians in the UK, Tees Valley Mayor, Baron Ben Houchen of High Leven.
The Electric Arc Lark
The main driver behind Skerningham Estates is Ben Houchen’s business associate, Martin Corney. You’ll remember him from such roles as Joint Venture partner in the infamous Teesworks deal. He’s already made £45mn from that. Here are Ben Houchen and Martin Corney pictured either side of the Jingye company’s CEO, Huiming Li, at the launch of the company’s doomed electric arc furnace project in November 2023. Corney’s Teesworks Joint Venture partner, and Ben Houchen’s business associate, Chris Musgrave is in the picture too. That’s him in the light grey jacket, standing to Ben Houchen’s right.
You scratch my back…
It’s good to have friends. In 2018 Ben Houchen helped Martin Corney out by writing the foreword to Skerningham Estates’ glossy garden village brochure “North Darlington Skerningham: A garden Community for the Tees Valley”. Here’s an excerpt from Houchen’s foreword:
Brooklyn Bridge sales update
How many jobs, Ben? Oh dear. But we’ll leave that for another time. Four years later, TVCA chief executive Julie Gilhespie was asked in a Freedom of Information request about that endorsement of Martin Corney’s garden village by the Tees Valley Mayor. Gilhespie replied that Baron Houchen’s “personal” decision to support the project was made “independently of the Authority (TVCA)”.
If you want to get ahead, get a hat
It seems that Baron Houchen brings two hats into the office, swapping them over depending on whose business deals he’s endorsing at any given moment.
To be continued…
We’ve reached the halfway point of the meeting. There’s still plenty to tell, but there’s just too much information to fit in one article. We’ll do that in Part Three, which will be published as soon as possible. It will conclude the meeting with the TVCA. Then we’ll discuss the debrief immediately afterwards. Here, the possible formation of the pressure group ROOTS (Residents Opposing Overdevelopment & Traffic Schemes) was debated.
Stop Press
On 30 September, Skerningham Estates launched three appeals to the Planning Inspectorate in respect of planning applications that had been submitted to Darlington Borough Council in 2024 and 2025. The appeals are based on “non-determination”, ie Darlington Council’s failure to respond to the planning applications. All three appeals relate to Skerningham Garden Village projects. The appeals will now go to three separate Public Inquiries to be held in March 2027, unless an agreement can be made between the company and the council before then. You can read North East Bylines’ full report on this here.
Further reading
29 September 2026
Darlington Northern Link Road: a grassroots campaign springs into life (Part One)
Thanks to the ROOTS team for providing additional research for article
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