Press

We consider quality of life, residential amenity and sleep especially to be paramount in considering any planning decision, principally for health. National Planning Guidance suggests that significant outdoor events be limited in duration and quantity to only 3 per year if they are likely to cause disruption to residents.  Further there are various restrictions and regulations which are supposed to protect residents.

We do not consider surrounding a town and village with car parks which have the potential to be  open almost 24/7 along with night time disturbance from 11.00am until the early hours during our summer weekends acceptible to ensuring quality of life, health, amenity, work, and family life. Currently in the order of 4.5k cars (this keeps changing) are proposed adding to air quality issues, noise pollution, and severe bottle necks in a rural County Durham town. This does not appear to be sustainable tourism.

Car parks have been placed next to residents without planning approval. These have been allowed to run on a ‘high risk’ development site from previous mining in full knowledge of the local authority with no mitigation. This is an EIA development due to the beauty of the historic environment, noting importance of landscape and ecology. Residents have been severely disrupted throughout Bishop Auckland and the village of Toronto especially at a time of day which would be seen as unacceptable to most. There continues to be a moving feast of car park applications which are out of scale with their surroundings and running at a time of night which many other developments are declined at the planning stage.

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