A COUNCIL has performed a u-turn after controversially replacing the chiming of a town's historic clock bells with pre-recorded ringing.

The bells in Darlington’s Victorian clock tower have chimed on the hour and every quarter hour for more than 150-years - but on Friday they were silenced by Darlington Borough Council and replaced by a digital recording so it could be switched off at night.

The move was in response to complaints that the bells, cast by Warner & Sons - who also created the originals for Big Ben - were keeping guests at a town centre hotel awake at night.

A PA system was fitted at a cost of £6,000 allowing the pre-recorded chimes to be automatically silenced between 11pm and 8am.

This would have been impossible with the real bells, which would have had to be manually silenced each night and turned back on each morning.

Robin Blair, who has worked in town’s Covered Market for more than 50-years, said people were “up in arms” that the council made the move without any public consultation.

An online petition calling for the original bell peals to return attracted more than 60 signatures within an hour of its launch on Thursday morning, and by lunchtime a council spokeswoman confirmed the recording was being scrapped and the authentic chimes restored.

“We would like to apologise for the disruption to the clock tower bells this week," she said.

“While we value visitors to our town and want them to have a good experience while staying with us, we know that they too will appreciate our traditions.

“A pre-recorded chime is no substitute for the real thing.

“The bells will go back on on Friday morning and we will work with our hotels to explore other solutions to the night time noise concern.”

The spokeswoman added that the council was now looking at other uses for the PA system bought to play the chimes.

Conservative councillor Charles Johnson said it was “unacceptable” for the council to have gone ahead with the scheme without proper consultation.

He said he would raise the matter at a Conservative group meeting this evening (Thursday, July 2) where they would discuss calling the matter in for scrutiny.

Cllr Johnson added: “The bottom line is that they shouldn’t be spending money changing something that is part of historic Darlington.

“There is all this talk about the importance of heritage and then something like this creeps in under the carpet.

“It is totally unreasonable to do things like this without council scrutiny; this isn’t the way to do things in a democratic process.”

Dale Needham, general manager of the Mercure Darlington King’s Head Hotel, said staff do receive regular complaints from guests about the night-time chimes, including from those who say it would prevent them from returning to stay in the town, and others who use online review sites to warn potential guests about the noise.

Mr Needham said he was not told about the recording being implemented, and was equally surprised to hear it had been scrapped within days.

He said: “It represents a huge U-turn by the council and I would question why they made the change in the first instance and reneged on the decision so soon.

“Visitors to the town may well leave with a ringing in their ears when it comes to disturbed sleep when investing in business in the town.”

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