VILLAGERS who said a new housing scheme would swamp their former pit community have been offered a compromise by council planners.

Dozens of residents in Witton Park objected to a development blueprint from Wear Valley District Council outlining proposals for 90 homes on grassland, which is used as a village green.

They argued that the houses would cause traffic problems, overload existing amenities such as schools, leave village children without a playing area and destroy the character of the neighbourhood.

Now the authority's regeneration committee has agreed to rethink the scheme and allocate a vacant industrial site for housing instead of land in the centre of the village.

Residents will be consulted on the future of a third area north of Low Queen Street.

Committee chairman Alan Townsend proposed the compromise. He said: "We are trying to do our best in a sensitive situation."

Witton Park councillor Vince Perkins said: "We must get this right. Residents are in favour of infill development and that is happening. But 90 homes would be too much for the village to take."

Planning permission has been granted to build a church north of Low Queen Street and £100,000 has already been raised.

Councillor Chris Foote Wood said residents should be given help about how to register some of the land as a village green.

He said: "Let us sit down with the people of Witton Park and discuss plans for ten, 20 or 30 homes. We don't want to see overdevelopment, as has happened elsewhere."

Council leader Olive Brown said: "We need development or the village will die. We have shown we are listening."

Resident Marek Sochocki welcomed the compromise plan. He said: "I felt encouraged by the council's commitment to consultation and look forward to working in partnership with them through an inclusive public consultation with villagers on the future of Witton Park."

Ideas for development of the village were originally initiated by residents in 1991 and endorsed in the Wear Valley Local Plan in 1997.

In 2000, work started on Beddow Court, the first new estate in the village since building was blocked by a Category D tag in the 1960s.