A DEVELOPMENT company has spoken of how it had to abandon plans for an out-of-town business park.

Highbridge Morton Palms had won planning permission to build the first two office blocks on a site off Darlington's Yarm Road, creating up to 400 jobs.

The park is a joint venture between Darlington Borough Council and regional development agency One NorthEast, which together have already spent £1.5m on roads and infrastructure for the site.

As reported in yesterday's edition of The Northern Echo, Highbridge Morton Palms is no longer working on the site and the search has begun for a new developer.

Highbridge director Simon Davies said the deal ran into difficulty when planning permission was sought by JJB Sports for a Soccerdome complex on a nearby site, which led fitness entrepreneur Duncan Bannatyne to withdraw his interest in opening a gym at Morton Palms.

Mr Davies said: "We won the contract with our bid, which had an emphasis on leisure as well as offices.

"We wanted to develop the five-acre area at the front of the site as a leisure area, and we had spoken to Duncan Bannatyne about building a fitness centre and a head office for his business.

"When JJB Sports applied for planning permission for the Soccerdome, Mr Bannatyne said he would pull out of our deal unless it was guaranteed the football scheme would be rejected by planners.

"The council could not give that assurance, and so we would have to have waited for the application to go through all the planning channels.

"At the same time, the council had other agreements that meant the development work had to start sooner than we could, if we were waiting for the Soccerdome decision."

At the time the deal collapsed, Mr Bannatyne said he had no option but to withdraw his interest in the site when there was a possibility of another leisure business operating in the same area.

The council confirmed that Highbridge Morton Palms was unable to fit in with the council's timetable, but stressed there was a lot of interest in the site from developers.

Despite the decision to leave Morton Palms, Mr Davies said his company still had a good relationship with Darlington Borough Council and One NorthEast, with whom it is working on a project in Tyneside