Skerningham woodland: A river runs through it, but a road?
What's not to like about getting two roads for the price of one? PLENTY!
Skerningham Woodland Action Group (SWAG) represents more than 1,000 residents who do not want any development in this exceptional area of rural England. We have been campaigning since before 2020.
Darlington does not need this large, sprawling, housing estate and we present the evidence for that here. We believe that Darlington Council covets the plan for 3,700-houses (or more) as a huge boost to its income because of the extra Council Tax it will receive from so many homes with three, four or more bedrooms, in a rural setting.
It’s called “Council Tax Farming”.
Desperate local authorities do it to refill coffers after years and years of Governments decimating their ability to provide services by cutting their grants.
Residents first heard about the proposal to develop Skerningham into a “garden village” of 4,500 homes (now 3,700 after Darlington Golf Club decided not to move out) via an article in the Northern Echo, in 0ctober 2017.
The site will have a “distributor road” running from east to west, linking clumps of houses with each other and, potentially, with the schools, community centre, medical centre, shops and pub which the developers promise to develop at some point in the future, though there is no cast-iron guarantee. The current plan has this road cutting across the woodland twice.
We believe the council also saw the plan as a lever towards getting its highly-desired Darlington Northern Link Road (DNLR), which will connect the A167 with the A1150 and take through-traffic out of the town.
Intriguingly, Tees Valley Mayor Baron Houchen of High Leven told BBC radio in August, 2025 that Darlington Council had “signed off” on a plan to take this road south of the woods. That’s where the garden village road will run. Thus the quiet, rural road would, instead, become the busy new bypass, with all the dangers to residents and wildlife that implies. After SWAG's inquiries, Darlington Council's cabinet meeting was told he was wrong but he has yet to admit it.
The Government has already allocated £250 million for the bypass, so if Lord Houchen is correct, the developers would have no need to shell out millions for their own road. They, of course, could afford it as they will make squillions from the garden village house sales. Not that they need it. Martin Corney and Ian Waller, the directors of Theakston Estates Ltd, the garden village developer, already have lucrative projects in Tees Valley, most notably the 90 percent shareholding in Teesworks-Freeport, gifted to them by Lord Houchen.
Skerningham Plantation, affectionately known locally as Skunny woods at one end, and Hutton Plantation at the other, with the Skerningham Community Woodland now linking these veteran woodlands together, are not protected in the Local Plan, the council’s main guide when it comes to deciding planning applications.
Skerningham Community Woodland was developed with the help of forestry grants and opened in 2004 as an addition to the Tees Forest. It is nestled between the two older woods which are both Priority Habitat Deciduous Woodlands. There are rare black poplars in the community woodland surround the grave of local naturalist David Green and SWAG has had Tree Preservation Orders placed on them.
The entire woodland is listed as a large nature reserve on the Council’s website. The older sections are classified by DEFRA, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, as “Priority Habitat Deciduous Woodland”.
But back to that road. Concentrate as the yarn gets knottier. The Government’s garden village rules say local people must have a meaningful say, from design stage to delivery. And the Government’s “National Model Design Code” says something similar. The “Design Code” is a document each council draws up to ensure planned buildings suit the local environment and maintain certain standards.
Many public workshops were held so that local people could have a say over the Skerningham Garden Village Design Code. People were very pleased to see that they had been listened to because the first draft said the local distributor road “will be aligned to avoid the existing Skerningham Plantation and being visible from the river Skerne”. As the process continued, however, the words “as far as possible” were inserted at the developers’ behest. When this was questioned, after the local elections, residents were told that to reinstate the original wording would be unlawful.
Here is an example of what the Deputy Leader of Darlington Council Chris McEwan, who is also Cabinet Member for Economy, has been telling residents: “ As I have said before, the policy requirement is that a local distributor road is provided. In Policy H10 of the Local Plan, regarding the distributor road it states: ‘Precise details of the road and development access points, together with a timetable for its implementation, shall be agreed with the Council as part of the comprehensive masterplan, infrastructure phasing plan and any future planning applications for the site.’ If, as this detailed work comes forward, the only technically achievable route affected some of the wood, then by stating in the design code that the wood would not be affected would be in direct conflict with the Local Plan policy requirement which de facto would be against the Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) Regulations 2012. There is case law in this respect. Such a conflict could be challengeable in the Courts, a case the Council I am advised would not win. Consequently, I could not recommend anything to Council which I believe to be unlawful and subject to challenge as I believe this would incur costs against the Council and would be overturned.”
As we say above, the Tees Valley Mayor appears to believe that all such complex legal entanglement is irrelevant as Darlington Council has “written off on” an intention to build a bypass rather than a village road. This was not in the Skerningham masterplan or the Design Code so, presumably, public consultation will have to start all over again.
