£2m caravan park being built on outskirts of town, Teesdale Mercury

£2m caravan park being built on outskirts of town

Mar 2, 2010

Work has begun to create a new £2million caravan site in the dale.

The Caravan Club site, on land off Lartington Lane, near Startforth, covers eight acres and will consist of 76 hardstanding touring pitches.

The site will also feature a toilet block with baby and toddler facilities, a children’s play area, a laundry and an information point.

The Caravan Club, which has more than 200 sites across the country, said it will implement a number of energy-saving measures.

There will be ground source underfloor heating in the toilet block, rainwater recovery for flushing toilets and solar pre-heating of hot water.

A spokeswoman for the club said: “The club always favours the opportunity to develop a site ‘from scratch’ on either greenfield or brownfield land, and has had several successes in recent years.

“This approach enables perfect planning to the high standards and specifications that members rightly expect.

“It is exciting for the estates team staff when an opportunity such as this arises as it means they can start with a ‘blank canvas’.”

The site came to the club’s attention in September 2008, when its head of estates, Tony Barnett was on his way home from a holiday in County Durham and passed a for sale sign for the plot of land.

“He called the agent the next morning only to be informed it was going up for sale that same evening – so he had to move fast,” the spokeswoman said.

“Tony managed to persuade the agent to withdraw the plot from auction to enable negotiations to take place with the vendor.”

The club said full feasibility work followed, examining drainage, connection to water mains, telephone lines and electricity.

Durham County Council granted planning permission in April 2009, over objections from Lartington Parish Council.

In a letter, the parish council said it feared caravans turning into and out of the site will cause traffic problems.

“We feel that the situation of the site at the crest of the hill could create problems at a point in which traffic (rightly or wrongly) begins to accelerate,” the council said.

The parish council also highlighted a lack of pedestrian access to footpaths and bridleways.

“Pedestrians walking to Barnard Castle will have to either walk on a busy highway or trespass through adjacent fields – neither being an attractive prospect,” the council said.

The spokeswoman for the Caravan Club said it is hoped the site, known as Teesdale Barnard Castle Caravan Club Site, will be open in August.

Planning permission for an unrelated 25-pitch static caravan site at land nearby was granted in 2006.

The Camping and Caravanning Club, which is unrelated to the Caravan Club, applied to extend an existing campsite into land adjacent to Raygill Farm.

A spokesman for Camping and Caravanning Club said the club has no current plans to act on the planning permission and is keeping its options open.