Some of you, although probably not many, would have spotted that a further step in the consultation process for the Skerningham development took place at the beginning of November. There has been deep dissatisfaction from residents about how this consultation has been set up and organised.
Unbelievably, there was no advance announcement or publicity by the council for these “consultation events” about the builders’ master-planning stage. In fact, the council was later at pains to make it clear that the sessions had nothing to do with them and that they were arranged by the developers.
The first anyone knew about it was when leaflets arrived at just 4,000 households in the northern part of town (the rest of Darlington’s 108,000 population were left in the dark and even some houses very close to the proposed development didn’t get a leaflet). Even those lucky enough to be informed were given only a few days’ notice of just four events, all scheduled within working hours.
Pressure from Green Party councillors and local people led to one additional session being arranged, which took place at 5-8pm, and to the extension of the closing date for comments - November 30th instead of 19th.
People who attended the events found out nothing new about the project, lots of questions remained unanswered, and there was one instance of two people asking the same question at different times and getting completely different answers.
The Masterplan itself is supposed to be a comprehensive planning document containing lots of details - this was definitely not comprehensive and, most worrying, there appeared to have been no changes made to the Design Code after previous consultations and workshops.
An overriding theme was the feeling that the whole thing was nothing more than a box-ticking exercise.
Any comments on the scheme will only be considered if sent in writing to www.skerningham.co.uk by Thursday November 30th.
