Location, location

The questionnaires for the Parish Plan, to which Coun Lee referred, were answered in 2003 and the number of respondents represented a small percentage of the adult population of the parish.

There has been no further investigation since then and no evidence has been provided that a care home is needed. No research has been carried out to establish how many people have left Heighington in recent years to reside in a care home elsewhere.

At the meeting held on October 1, Councillor Lee accepted that the number of people affected by the need to move from the village in their old age was low (two or three).

A care home in Heighington would not have enough “customers” from the village itself. This would mean having residents from elsewhere. Therefore, the argument about people having to travel from Heighington into Darlington or Newton Aycliffe would equally apply to people having to travel to a Heighington care home from surrounding areas.

Councillor Lee’s idea of having a care home in a specific location on the eastern side of the village was rejected by residents because the site he claimed as “obvious” would have serious access and parking problems but more significantly would be outside the village development boundary.

In 2008 a planning application to build affordable housing on the same site was rejected by the borough council because it contravened planning criteria.

In addition, the site is directly opposite a group of listed buildings which enjoy protection under the Government’s national policy guidelines. Should any application to build outside the village envelope succeed it would be likely to establish a precedent for further green-field development not only around Heighington but other local villages also.

The rural communities and village environments in the Darlington area are the jewels in the crown of the Borough Council.

Much of the borough, of which Heighington is part, consists of attractive and unspoilt countryside with well defined boundaries between built-up and rural areas.

There is no such thing as a “small” care home. To be viable, a home would have to cater for many more residents than Heighington could provide. The conclusion has to be, therefore, that any care home built in Heighington could not be a facility just for the village.

There is concern that if planning permission for a care home was granted and the home failed to materialise, the planning application, or the building itself, could easily be changed to a different use.

The main argument is, therefore, not “is a care home required?” but “where, within the village development boundary, should a care home be built?”

PETER F WELLINGS Station Road, Heighington