PLANS for a new housing development in Darlington have been submitted.

An application for 81 new houses adjacent to the Redhall estate has been submitted by Keepmoat Homes, as part of NHS England’s Healthy New Towns programme.

The homes, which are made up of a number of two and three bedroom properties, would be built on the site of the former Darlington Equestrian Centre on McMullen Road. 

It was announced last year that NHS England had selected a handful of new major housing projects across the UK where joint working between health agencies and developer’s was to be encouraged.

A bid by Darlington Borough Council, Darlington Clinical Commissioning Group and County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust involving Keepmoat Homes was one of ten successful bids out of 114 applicants.

Miriam Davidson, programme lead for healthy new towns director of public health for Darlington, said: “This proposal by Keepmoat is a key development in the Healthy New Towns project for Darlington, which has made great progress since it was introduced last year.

“We hope that this will be an exemplar development and demonstration project that embraces the Darlington Healthy New Towns design principles, which we have recently developed.

“We are holding a Healthy New Towns stakeholder event on Friday, where Keepmoat Homes as a key partner will be explaining how they have been working to incorporate ‘healthy design’ into their proposals,” she added.

If planning permission is granted, work is expected to start on the development in December.

Keepmoat Homes says the project is focusing on the eastern growth area of Darlington because it has “significantly higher premature mortality rates, higher levels of worklessness, emergency hospital admissions and an ageing population that wants to stay near their community”.

Ian Prescott, land and partnership’s director for Keepmoat Homes, said: “We’ve been working with the council to deliver an innovative new approach to housing delivery in Darlington and were part of the bidding process – so we’re delighted to have got plans submitted for consideration.”