In Part Two of this article, we’d reached the halfway point of a meeting between Jonathan Spruce, Director of Infrastructure at the Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA) and a group of residents concerned about the consultation process for the proposed Darlington Northern Ring Road DNLR.
Two Lane Black Top
Road costs can make or break a developer’s housing scheme, particularly if they need to bridge a railway line and a river. However, Theakston Estates Ltd could get lucky if Darlington’s new northern bypass (the DNLR) should happen to cross their Skerningham Garden Village mega-estate. And the cheaper of the two remaining bypass choices – either of which will be paid for by the government — does just that.
This isn’t what we signed up to
It follows the line of the garden village’s planned “distributor road”, a supposedly quiet, healthy, walkable and cycleable connection between housing clusters, not a regional heavy goods route whose drivers will not like slowing down for all the roundabouts which the garden village will require. If that route, dubbed the “Do minimum” bypass choice, is chosen some of the road costs might be recoupable from Theakston. But Dave Clark, from the residents’ groups that had been granted the audience with Spruce, wasn’t happy. He asked why property developers weren’t obliged to pay 100% of the costs of the road through their estate as part of their “Section 106 Agreement”.
Section 106 sounds complicated
It can be. If the ‘Do Minimum’ option is chosen for the bypass, Darlington Council will be able to kickstart the project by signing a “Section 106 Agreement” with the developer. That will include a legally-binding assurance from Skerningham Estates to build the DNLR. In exchange, the council will lend them enough money – thought to be £10 million – to start work on the allegedly £140 million road. So house-building can then begin. They’ll have to refund the loan, of course, but not until the 1,500th home has been completed. That “private sector contribution” will be deducted from the DfT’s grant to the Tees Valley Combined Authority, assuming that it is, indeed, ever received.
Are we in the loop?
For the past seven years, Darlington Council planning officers have been insisting that the DNLR and the garden village distributor road are two entirely separate projects. Who’s going to tell them?
Hobson’s choice
Now we come to the second reason why the TVCA may prefer the ‘Do Minimum’ option. Well the clue is in the name: it’s by far the cheapest, at £140mn. Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen frequently refers to the advantages of getting the DNLR bypass built on a shoestring. He argues that he’ll be able to deduct the actual cost from a £250mn pot promised by the government and spend the remaining £110mn on shiny things. But he well knows that this isn’t how the Treasury operates. If the TVCA plumps for the cheap option, the Chancellor will find a way to withhold that £110mn. At the other end of the scale, the most ambitious bypass option would cost £365mn. That’s £115mn over the £250mn budget. Baron Houchen, the DfT and HM Treasury will want to swerve that.
Image courtesy of Jacobs
The ghost at the feast
But there are some projects missing from this consultation process. The Options Assessment Report (OAR) for the bypass, published on 17 April, contained eight road options, which were subsequently reduced to five by the time of the 31 July consultation. Alex Swainston, leader of the “No to Darlington Northern Link Road” group, asked Jonathan Spruce why this had happened. He explained that all of the route options had been evaluated using the DfT’s Easy Assessment and Sifting Tool (EAST), the recommended toolkit for grading transport proposals.
The signals are flashing red
EAST is in charge, and the three road schemes that got “red-lighted” between April and July can be seen below at the top of the table below.
Copy and paste
Here’s an interesting bit. It’s complicated but don’t panic! Several residents made comparisons between Route A, north of Skerningham woodland and the river (and the preferred route in the first DNLR consultation process in 2017), and Route 1, which fell at the final hurdle this year. So, here’s Route A from 2017, on the right hand side of the map below. Route A had won out over Route B, on the left. Not surprising, really; Route B, if selected, would have caused extensive environmental damage, including the obliteration of the remains of a medieval village.
Now we can directly compare Route A from 2017 (above) with Route 1 from Jacobs’ April 2026 Options Assessment report (below). They are strikingly similar, apart from a realignment of Junction 59 of the A1(M), due to change in safety standards in the intervening nine years. Further down this article, you’ll see where the ROOTS team has produced a close up map of this realignment.
Crosstown Traffic
Why are these northerly routes, above the trees and away from the garden village, significant? Because they’re the only ones that create a direct route between Little Burdon, on the A66, and Junction 59 of the A1(M). No intervening roundabouts, and no conflicts with the thousands of vehicles that would be generated within the garden village.
All of the five options that made the final selection involve numerous roundabouts and they all involve interaction with the dreaded A167, a single carriageway road, with numerous road junctions, and one of Darlington’s most famous car parks during rush hours.
It does what it says on the tin
So you’d think that Route 1 would be in with a shout. Looking at that EAST scoreboard, it only just failed to make the grade, with a total score 43 points. Route 1C made the cut with only two points more, so it was close. When we look at those EAST scores in more detail, we see the decision was mainly about the money. Route 1 did poorly on (1) capital cost, and (2) economic scoring. We can look at these in more detail.
Let’s get down to the nitty gritty
Route 1 had a high capital cost. It would have cost £309mn. That’s £59mn more than the entire £250mn DNLR budget. But, only three months later, the current consultation contains a “More Ambitious plus Variant C” option which comes in at a whopping £365mn. That blows past the DNLR budget by £115mn, and tops Route 1 by £56mn.
Make this make sense.
But it’s even worse than that
Inexplicably, and confusingly, in between the 2017 consultation, the OAR in April 2026, and the consultation process in July 2026, Jacob renamed the route options from alphabetical ones, to numerical ones, and then back to alphabetical ones. We can see the “More Ambitious plus Variant C” option on the map below. Setting aside the needless change in nomenclature, “More Ambitious plus Variant C” involves a longer journey than Route 1, it dumps traffic on to a roundabout on the A167, way short of the A1(M), instead of connecting directly to it like Route 1 does. And, as we saw above,“More Ambitious plus Variant C” costs £56mn MORE than Route 1. Ambitious? This is the very definition of UNAMBITIOUS.
Economic Scoring
And yet the factor that is supposed to have killed Route 1 off was its “economic scoring”: It scored poorly for “well being” and “value for money.” Some would argue that the “well being” factor is subjective, rather than objectively based, but computer says no.
Riddle me this
Jonathan Spruce replied that the EAST toolkit had ruled out any option that would provide a new junction on the A1(M). But that’s strange; the EAST toolkit doesn’t mention anything about motorway junctions.
That’s a bold statement
Also, Spruce said that National Highways had said that the DNLR couldn’t connect to Junction 59 of the A1(M). After reviewing a transcript of this conversation on 1 October, the new Darlington ROOTS campaign group decided to send Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) requests to National Highways, the DfT and the TVCA in an attempt to verify this statement. The TVCA acknowledged receipt of its EIR request on 2 October. Any replies received will be made available to Darlington residents via ROOTS. The ROOTS team has produced a close up of the Route 1 map contained in the OAR, in order to study Junction 59 more closely. This is the map.
Driving away from home
On the map, you can see Route 1 of the DNLR heading in from the east to intersect with a realigned Junction 59. The existing Lime Lane bridge over the motorway will be repurposed as a connecting road, which continues as a short section of road connecting with a roundabout on the A167, and the B6444 to Newton Aycliffe. There would be two new roundabouts connecting to newly built slip roads. The equivalent slip roads on the existing Junction 59 would become superfluous and would be dismantled.
Life could be a dream
Imagine a journey on Route 1, if built: Starting at the Little Burdon roundabout, you would head north along the DNLR. There’d be no junctions or roundabouts until you reached the re-aligned Junction 59 of the A1(M) after about four minutes. For the northbound A1 (M), take a right at the second roundabout. To get to Newton Aycliffe, go straight on at this roundabout to the A167 roundabout. Go straight ahead here on to the B6444 to Newton Aycliffe
Easy peasy
Such a project wouldn’t present too much of a challenge to modern road builders, and it’s difficult to understand why National Highways would tell Jacobs and the TVCA that it can’t be done. At the other end of the DNLR, the Little Burdon roundabout on the A66 would need to be enlarged to cope with an extra entry/exit. A much smaller job than the Junction 59 rebuild.
This is your answer?
Jonathan Spruce said that anybody who wished to bring Route 1 back into the conversation could write it into their consultation survey. Well, good luck with that. Consultations don’t work that way. Our group got the impression that, yet again, the TVCA is nudging us all towards the “Do Minimum” bypass option, through Skerningham Garden Village. Spruce explained that the route variants from the current consultation are designed to extend the two core road options closer to the A1(M). That’s ironic; The rejected road, Route 1, doesn’t get closer to the A1(M), it takes you directly there. Those two core road options dump you halfway up the A167, leaving you to battle up to the motorway from there.
It’s a desktop study, apparently
Spruce explained that Jacobs OAR is a desktop study rather than being detailed. But we could really do with the detailed version at this stage. In addition to the bizarre route choice outlined above, we’ve got the conflicts reported in Part One of this article: Northumbrian Water’s Strategic Pipeline, and the Biodiversity Net Gain site at Hall Garth Hotel’s former golf course, neither of which the survey’s laptops picked up.
Answers on a postcard to the usual address
Silke Koltermann Oldridge, the TVCA’s transport survey guru, was also in attendance at the meeting. Silke was asked about the part of the survey which raised the most complaints. As we reported in Part One of this article, the survey asks if you are in favour of a link road, but if you say no, it just continues as if you said yes and asks which route you prefer. Kathy Barley, of SWAG, asked Silke whether the survey could be re-calibrated to allow an extra option at this stage. Silke said that it wasn’t possible to re-do the survey, because this could disadvantage other people who had already completed it. However she assured Kathy that “we can adjust for that”. We’ll need to keep an eye on the survey conclusion report to see how exactly this has been accomplished.
A journalist speaks
Ray Casey asked whether, given the numerous issues with Stage One of the DNLR process, there’d be further opportunities for public consultation. Jonathan Spruce replied that Stages 2 and 3, further down the line, would allow for this.
Can of worms
Richie Barlow of our ROOTS group, told Jonathan Spruce that Darlington residents were worried that the ‘Variant B’ route option could be seen as an access road not just to Skerningham Garden Village, but to Burtree Garden Village. (Did we mention that Darlington is one of few towns in the UK that has two garden villages under construction, and another on the horizon?) To answer Richie’s question ‘Variant B’ would, indeed connect the two garden villages via a roundabout on the A167.
Predetermination
Dave Clark then asked Jonathan about the possibility that Ben Houchen may have predetermined the final route decision by making two public statements, both of which indicated that the choice of route was a fait accompli. You can read more details of this in Part One of this article. There’s a link to that article at the bottom of this one.
What if the Mayor dissents?
Roz Henderson, of the Harrowgate Hill Greens, asked whether Mayor Ben Houchen could veto the result of the consultation if he did not like it. Jonathan Spruce replied that a decision of this magnitude would be made within the TVCA’s Single Assurance Framework. The final route of the DNLR would be decided by the entire cabinet. Spruce says that there are checks and balances within the TVCA constitution.
About those checks and balances
But Jonathan Spruce has only worked for the TVCA for five months. There have been times in previous years when the TVCA’s checks and balances failed. In the photo below, Spruce, in the light blue shirt, can be seen pondering checks and balances. Journalist Peter Greenwood, one of the writers of this article, can be seen on Jonathan Spruce’s right. George Campbell Wilson, representing Barmpton and Skerningham Parish is on Jonathan’s left.
Give me just a little more time
Our ROOTS group asked whether, given the numerous problems with the consultation survey to date, the TVCA would consider extending the deadline beyond 25 September. Spruce said that he would get back to us on that issue. In fact, the day after the meeting, the TVCA extended the completion deadline to 5 October.
Let’s call it quits
The meeting, having started at 5pm, ended promptly at 6pm. It was a civil and courteous exchange of views. But a lot of questions were left hanging. Our ad hoc group headed back to the Landside Café for a debrief. We decided that we’d make this a permanent group. This was the start of the formation of our pressure group ROOTS (Residents Opposing Overdevelopment & Traffic Schemes). But we weren’t quite there yet.
Stop Press
On 4 October, Tees Valley Monitor published an article which questions the traffic survey included in Jacobs’ OAR. The OAR survey refers to traffic on the A1150. The DNLR is intended to provide “resilience” to the A1150, but Tees Valley Monitor has noted several flaws in the survey report. The report claims 10,000 vehicles from outside Darlington are using the A1150 each day. But Jacobs didn’t monitor the origin or destination of vehicles on the road, so Jacobs has no way of knowing whether that 10,000 figure is correct. The OAR also refers to high levels of traffic from Teesworks, Teesside Freeport and Teesside Airport. Between them, these three sites generate negligible levels of traffic to the A1150, and are unlikely to do so in future.
To be continued…
In Part Four of this article, we’ll continue the story of the evolution of ROOTS and how it began to build a social media profile. We’ll also discuss the pro-active approach that ROOTS has taken to obtain further information about the DNLR, and get this information out to the residents of Darlington and the surrounding area.
Further reading
29 September 2026
Darlington Northern Link Road: a grassroots campaign springs into life (Part One)
2 October 2026
Darlington’s Skerningham Garden Village controversy bursts back into life
3 October 2026
Darlington Northern Link Road: A campaign takes ROOT (Part Two: Question Time at Teesside Airport)
Additional research by the team at ROOTS (Residents Opposing Overdevelopment & Traffic Schemes)
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