Democracy dies in Durham City.

We have the alteration of Durham Market Place finally taking place to the tune of £5m that nobody wants, and if we were to refuse to move the Lord Londonderry statue, we lose the money to develop the city with it; such is the way that regional development agencies work.

Harvey Dowdy, director of Durham City Vision, has been quoted as saying of the plan: “I am really pleased, but that’s tempered with having a deep respect for the opinions of the people. I think this is a compromise that will help the city move forward”. What compromise? The decision to originally make changes to the marketplace was decided by the ONE regional development agency, and when the public speaks up the council let them down.

The Labour council members have stressed the authority of their position as “elected representatives”, yet the decision has been passed onto an authority with very little knowledge of the area, never mind understanding the wishes of the residents of Durham. The decisions were referred to the Government Office for the West Midlands, which was chosen over that for the North-East for its impartiality, is that ‘Government speak’ for pushing through a decision which the public don’t want? The most recent leader in the Durham Times echoes the public outrage.

There was certainly enough evidence to show that the vast majority of the public are opposed to the scheme. At least 6,000 people have signed petitions against the proposal, and a 4000 strong facebook group, and I have no doubt they feel resentful that they would lose the money if they ever were successful – there’s plenty in Durham that needs work upon.

‘The Gate’ shopping centre in Durham has had a number of stores open up for short periods of time only to close quickly due to crushing rent, and lack of money of Durham shoppers, heck we even had a Waitrose manage to shut down in a city full of students.

Now, since other shops cannot stay open, Durham has had two Tescos open up either end of the City. I’m not going to pass judgment as of yet, but speaking to friends in Scotland, they may not be so cheap and friendly in the future. Durham needs regeneration, we need to stop overburdening our local businesses with regulation and corporation tax, and put money in the pockets of our local residents – not top down unpopular schemes. A bit of localism to return democracy to our area wouldn’t go amiss either… time to scale back the unaccountable regional development agencies.