Residents of north Darlington and villages such as Barmpton were left stunned today, when Skerningham Estates, the backers of the controversial Skerningham Garden Village project, launched three simultaneous appeals to the Planning Inspectorate. This is intended to kickstart the scheme, which has been held up in the planning process for 18 months.
What happened on 30 September?
One of the members of the ROOTS pressure group was making a routine sweep of the Darlington Borough Council online planning portal on 1 October. The group checks the portal periodically to keep a watchful eye over planning applications which affect north Darlington and the surrounding countryside.
We’re new to this
ROOTS (Residents Opposing Overdevelopment and Traffic Systems) was only formed two weeks ago, as an alliance of pressure groups concerned about the consultation process for the Darlington Northern Link Road (DNLR).
Shocked, I tell you
ROOTS’ check of the planning portal revealed that, on 30 September 2026, Skerningham Estates had made appeals to the Planning Inspectorate in respect of three planning applications that had been submitted in 2024 and 2025. The appeals are based on “non-determination”, ie Darlington Council’s failure to respond to the planning applications. In effect, these applications were laying dormant within the council’s planning department. Until now. But why now? We’ll come to that later. But first, the timeline that got us here.
A link road and a garden village
The progress of the DNLR has been inextricably linked for several years now, due to two events: The Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA) launched a consultation process for the DNLR in 2017, with two route options. One of these would have carved through the Low Skerningham area and Skerningham Woods area. But the consultees opted for a much more sensible, preferred route. This was named Route A, and would have swept to the east of Darlington, from the Little Burdon roundabout on the A66, up to junction 59 of the AI(M) near Newton Aycliffe.
A garden village or a town?
But the cash wasn’t there, and the plans were shelved. At around the same time, October 2017 Skerningham Estates announced plans for a garden village. Coincidentally, this would be located in the same area that the consultees had just avoided for the DNLR. It’s several kilometres south west of Route A. But the extent of the company’s ambition was almost overwhelming. They intended to build 4,500 homes. Campaign groups soon sprang up in opposition to Skerningham Garden Village.
He’s making promises again
In January 2024, at the launch of his reelection campaign, Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen announced that he intended to fund the DNLR. This was a repeat of his promise from seven years earlier. A few months later, the TVCA hired engineering consultants Jacobs to produce an “Options Assessment Report” (OAR) for the DNLR. But Jacobs dragged their heels and didn’t produce the OAR until April 2026. The road options were similar to those produced for the 2017 DNLR consultation.
2017 DNLR consultation
Three months later, the TVCA launched a second consultation for the DNLR. The route options were very different to those produced earlier and were a series of compromised hybrid options which didn’t suit anyone. The consultation process itself was flawed. There were problems with the consultation documents, and also with the survey design. Campaign groups and residents began to complain to the TVCA. So much so that the consultation coordinator invited the residents to a meeting at the TVCA office on 16 September. A debrief of residents after that meeting led to the formation of the ROOTS pressure group.
Campaign success
ROOTS campaigning had an immediate success, when the TVCA agreed to extend the DNLR consultation deadline from 25 September to 5 October. But the group continued to wrestle with errors in the consultation process
Going nuclear
And so to the events of 30 September. Skerningham Estates’ three planning applications for the garden village had lain dormant for some time since being submitted between 2024 and 2025. But on 30 September it went nuclear. It launched appeals to the Planning Inspectorate against the Darlington Borough Council’s failure to respond to its planning applications
Two sides to every story
The decisions on these planning applications will now be taken out of the hands of Darlington Borough Council. Instead, these decisions will be made by the planning inspectors, because these are disputed applications. Skerningham Estates has now played its hand. North East Bylines believes that the applications were delayed due to the developers not agreeing to the 106 planning conditions that had been set by the council. Several of these are thought to be related to the reluctance of Skerningham Estates to pay for the distributor road that would serve Skerningham Garden Village.
Lawyers always win
This is a significant play. Unless other steps are taken, Skerningham Estates’ action will lead to three separate Public Inquiries, one for each planning application. These Inquiries are scheduled for 2 March 2027. But there’s a possible way out
Finding common ground
At any time prior to the public Inquiry, Darlington Borough Council could agree a “Statement of Common Ground” with Skerningham Estates. In other words, a compromise. The sticking point with the garden village has always been the sheer number of homes that the Skerningham Estates intends to build. The company could agree to reduce the scope of some of its plans, which would almost certainly consist in a reduction in the number of houses to be built.
Hard times ahead
Councillors and council officers are now facing a difficult few weeks. They’ve got to revisit those three planning applications and decide how they would have decided them if it had come to it. If they are minded to refuse the applications, the council’s planning committee will need to vote on the reasons for refusal. This will establish the council’s formal legal stance, so it’s got to be watertight.
Lose/Lose Situation
Darlington Council is between a rock and a hard place. If it fails to agree common ground with the property developers, it will be facing three public inquiries. These will cost the council millions of pounds. If the council loses these, Skerningham Estates will go back to their original plans. If the council wins, the company could take the council to the High Court via a judicial review, to try to get the decision reversed. A costly and damaging fight. Legal fees have never been an obstacle to Skerningham Estates, and its associated companies. Darlington councillors, on the other hand, will have to face the wrath of council taxpayers and voters at the local elections in May 2027 only weeks after the public inquiries come to an end.
I used to be indecisive, but now I’m not so sure
Darlington didn’t hear Skerningham Estates’ planning applications within a reasonable time frame. But that sometimes happens, and property developers can live with it. Over on the other side of the planned Skerningham Village, at Beaumont Hill, the Banks Group applied to the council to build 600 homes in 2022. But the company is waiting to agree infrastructure plans with Network Rail, whose East Coast Main Line forms the boundary of Banks’ Groups planned estate. No public inquiries; Banks will wait it out.
The masterplan
The company’s application actually falls within the scope of Skerningham Estates’ garden village masterplan. Here’s a map of the masterplan. To get your bearings, the red line on the left of the map is the A167. The one running across the bottom is the A1150. The roundabout junction with the A66 at Little Burdon is in the bottom right hand corner of the map.
The long game is over
And yet, Skerningham Estates hasn’t lifted a finger against Banks’ interloping. It has been willing to play the long game. But not anymore, it seems. At least not with Darlington Council
Get on with it
The council is always in a bind when dealing with Skerningham Estates planning applications. If it refuses permission, the developers will be straight on the phone to their lawyers. Public Inquiry ahoy. If it grants permission, it’ll be in a world of pain from its electors, with whom Skerningham Garden Village is deeply unpopular. It avoided this painful choice by simply closing its eyes to the applications. But this couldn’t go on forever, and it hasn’t
Nuclear option
So why did Skerningham Estates go nuclear on its planning application on 30 September? It could have done this at any time in the past 18 months. This may be a power play to draw two thorny issues to a close. Firstly, it intends to get on with building houses. There are 841 homes within the first two housing estates being proposed at this stage. But the big prize is the “distributor” road that will connect all of the new housing estates. That could be coming soon.
The deadline approaches
We’re approaching the deadline for consultations on the DNLR on 5 October. The consultation has been shambolic, but perhaps not enough for the result to be declared null and void. We’ve written recently about the long standing relationship between Ben Houchen and Martin Corney, the leader of the Skerningham Estates project. Members of the ROOTS group, and other residents of Darlington, have been aware of at least two attempts by Ben Houchen to sway the DNLR consultation process, by “predetermining” the outcome as a “fait accompli” in favour of the Skerningham Garden Village distributor road. This is known as the “Do Minimum” option in the DNLR consultation.
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Bring Route One into the game
ROOTS members will continue to attempt to bring “Route 1” which was excluded from the consultation process, but had been included in the April 2026 OAR, back into the conversation. Should Route 1 be chosen, the DNLR would avoid the whole of the area affected by the recent planning appeals.
Cross examination
ROOTS intends to secure “Rule 6 Status” to participate in the three public inquiries, if they go ahead. This would allow ROOTS to cross-examine the developer’s expensive expert witnesses (traffic engineers, ecologists, planners) and expose flaws in their data. However, ROOTS would probably need to hire experts to counter Skerningham Estates’ witnesses. This would be an expensive business, and there is no funding available at the time of writing.
Skerningham – the fight continues
If Darlington Council agrees a “statement of common ground” with Skerningham Estates, most of the developments within the three Appeal areas would probably go ahead. If this happens, ROOTS, and others will continue to campaign to stop all developments in the Skerningham area. This would include, for example, saving the Beech Tree on Barmpton Lane.
Where’s this all happening?
Here is a map showing the areas referred to in the planning appeals. Note that Appeal #2 refers to two separate plots of land. For information, there are no houses planned for the land at the top of the map, the Skerningham Woods area. The 441 homes that are part of this application would all be located either side of Barmpton Lane. There are no houses planned as part of Appeal #3; this would be a temporary construction “haul road” between Bishopton Lane and Barmpton Lane.
What happens now?
Darlington Borough Council planning officer Lisa Hutchinson confirmed that the council had received “Start Letters” from the Planning Inspectorate regarding the appeals on 30 September. These letters contain instructions to the council to send notification letters to everyone who has previously commented on the three planning applications. These letters will be sent out by the council in the coming days. The letters will set out how the residents can participate in the appeals process.
Interested parties have until 11:59pm on 4 November 2026 to make representations to the three Public Inquiries. The locations of these applications can be found on the map above. You can comment on any of the appeals by selecting the following links:
Appeal #1 – Appeal Reference 6015304 – Land north of Darlington known as Skerningham Garden Village, Low Skerningham Lane, Darlington, DL1 3JA. 441 homes planned.
Appeal #2 – Appeal Reference 6015305 – Land north of Darlington, East of the East Coast Mainline and west of Barmpton Lane and Bishopton Lane, Comprising Phases 2 and 3 at, Skerningham Garden. 400 houses planned.
Appeal #3 – Appeal Reference 6015306 – Field at Barmpton Lane, Darlington, DL1 3JP (“The Haul Road”)
Thanks to ROOTS group members for providing additional research for this article
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