There’s nowhere quite so peaceful and carefree to live in as a modern garden village. There’s no noise or traffic fumes, it’s safe for bairns to play out and they only have a ten-minute walk to a bright, new school.
Their parents can walk or cycle to work in minutes, too and there’s a crèche, nursery, health centre, shops, community centre and a pub. It’s all well away from the town suburbs, it includes “affordable” homes and even the bus stops are interwoven between lovely trees and green space.
That’s unless it’s Skerningham Garden Village in Darlington.
The planned 4,500 lovely country houses were to have all of this according to the developers’ bid to the government for garden community status. They were backed by the Tees Valley Mayor and the leader of Darlington Council. Unsurprisingly, the bid was successful.
But don’t phone the estate agents just yet. There’s a snag. Well, quite a few, actually. There won’t be a school, a thundering bypass will destroy the peace, the first houses will be built onto the suburban sprawl of Galloway/Annandale estate and Barmpton and “affordable” means knocking 20% off the house price – that’s the builder’s profit gone. Developers can cancel “affordable” housing promises if they prove “unviable”.
Garden villages
Skerningham Woodland Action Group (SWAG) says the scheme is really a “stealth housing estate” tagged onto the town with hardly any of the features that define garden villages.
These should include those described above, plus a community trust – rather than the developers – to manage the land and infrastructure in perpetuity. And it all is supposed to be within a ten-minute walk of home.
Developers Theakston Estates Ltd and Darlington Borough Council (DBC) formed a partnership after Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen promised local garden villages in his election campaign. He and DBC leader Councillor Stephen Harker wrote glowingly of the Skerningham proposal in the formal bid for government approval – and cash help.
Since getting the nod, the partnership has not sailed plainly. Here’s SWAG’s Kathy Barley: “For instance, the application for garden community status specifically promised two primary schools, with a nursery and crèche, plus a secondary school.
“But DBC now says Darlington currently has 1,439 vacant primary school places and 539 vacant secondary places. And birth rates are still falling. New schools in Skerningham would mean the closure of others across the borough so that promise will inevitably be broken.
“This means that the children from 4,500 households will have to be driven into town by their parents in a complete betrayal of what sustainable garden villages are about and adding thousands of cars to the rush-hour miseries on our roads.”
Speaking of roads, the partnership’s bid promised that the clusters of houses, schools, shops, clinic etc were to be joined together by a peaceful, walkable, bicycle-friendly, “distributor road”. There’s trouble at t’ mill over this.
North Darlington Relief Road
“It’s because of the planned North Darlington Relief Road,” said Barley. “It’s a bypass which will take thousands of cars and long-distance HGV traffic around Darlington. But it has become a puzzle.”
Originally the Transport Department, National Highways, Tees Valley Combined Authority and Darlington Council all said the best option was to take it north of Skerningham Woods – and many miles away from new homes and residents’ doorsteps.
But then the Mayor, Lord Houchen, announced on BBC radio that Darlington Council had already decided on a route south of the trees, taking it thundering alongside some of the new housing and cutting through the woodland itself.
Yet DBC leader Cllr Harker remains adamant that no decision has yet been made and insists the best options are definitely north of the woods.
The Mayor’s preferred southern route might please the bosses of Theakston Ltd more, though. The Mayor has a £250 million government grant for the bypass and, if it went through the garden village, they might not need to pay for their own road to link up the clusters of houses. Theirs is promoted as quiet, walkable and cycle-friendly, unlike the bypass, but they may think it best to not look a gift horse in the mouth.
Coincidentally, Key Theakston figures are the same businessmen who were beneficiaries of Lord Houchen’s gift of 90% of the lucrative Teesworks reclamation project, which has cost the taxpayer many millions of pounds.
“We don’t know who or what to believe,” said Barley. “Tragically, the housing scheme and its construction chaos will inevitably kill or drive away the much-loved deer, foxes, badgers, hares and red-listed birds from Skerningham’s open land. If a road goes through the trees then thousands more creatures will also be victims.”
In another breach of garden village principles, the plans show that the first clump of houses will stretch from the woodland’s edge right down to the back of existing houses on Galloway/Annandale estate and Barmpton Lane, with no space between old and new.
‘Strategic green gaps’ or fitting like jigsaw puzzles?
“Garden village developers are supposed to leave ‘strategic green gaps’ between their new houses and existing suburbs,” said Barley. “But the plans show they will be fitted like jigsaw pieces into the edge of the suburbs. The developers’ own illustration shows them squeezing in between back gardens and the woodland edge.”
Garden village designation gives a developer huge financial and planning benefits. These include funding for highly-expensive infrastructure like schools, roads and public transport, plus extra staffing in the council planning department and the clear signal to local people that the council and government are already in favour of the scheme.
When bidding for garden community status on the site of 38 hectares (94 acres) the partners also promised “bespoke” public transport. It is not known whether bus companies have been approached.
“All in all, it’s difficult to see how Skerningham can still be designated a garden village,” said Barley. “It is really what is called a ‘stealth housing estate’ which will obliterate our town’s best green space and kill or displace its diverse wildlife just for developers’ profit and extra council tax for the local authority.”
Darlington Green Party’s leader on the council, Cllr Matthew Snedker, said: “The promise of garden villages as attractive new communities, containing all local services has been shown to be hollow. Labour’s obsession with build-at-any-cost will leave Darlington having to deal with soulless urban sprawl.
“The fine words of consultants and developers, pledging to create vibrant and self-contained communities, where the necessities of life are a ten-minute walk away, are turning to dust. The Labour / Lib Dem run council has already started to line up the excuses, saying schools will not be built and energy efficiency standards may not be met.
“The need for more sustainable and affordable housing is clear. The cost of living crisis is being worsened by unaffordable rents and heating bills.
“The Skerningham scheme is looking like another expensive failure that will not meet the needs of current and future residents of Darlington.”
CAPTION: A developer’s image showing where new houses (white) will abutt to existing ones, contrary to garden village guidelines.
