A Vision for Darlington

A Local Plan sets out where new homes, workplaces and other developments should be built to meet the area’s future needs, while conserving an area’s most valuable environmental assets. Comprising a document and a map, a Local Plan sets planning policy and provides guidance on how planning applications are determined.

This document will have an end date of 2036 and will guide how the town develops by allocating some land for new development and protecting some in its current use. It will give clear guidance and vision which will stimulate inward investment and much needed housing development across the borough as well as including detailed new policies to help determine planning applications and manage developments of all types across the Borough. The plan will replace the Darlington Local Plan 1997, and the Darlington Core Strategy 2011.

The Council is required to have an up to date Development Plan for the Borough. Some of Darlington’s current policies are getting old and need refreshing, whilst some topics need totally new policies to ensure we meet the Borough’s future needs in the most sustainable way possible.

We were working on the Making and Growing Places DPD which would have delivered the Core Strategy we adopted in 2011, but it became clear that we couldn’t fit all the new development required into the old strategy. As soon as we realised we need a new strategy, we started work on a single Local Plan that could deliver the development the Borough needs and aspires to by 2036.

That doesn’t mean we are starting again from scratch. A lot of the work on the Core Strategy and the Making and Growing Places is still relevant and will inform the new Local Plan policies. We’re also using it in our Interim Planning Position Statement, which sets out the Council’s position on a number of planning issues.