PARISH councils in Darlington may have to revise their parish plans if they want them to be included in the planning process.

Parish councillors have complained that their local plans have been overlooked by Darlington Borough Council when making planning decisions.

The Darlington Association of Parish Councils asked planning officer Valerie Adams what could be done to get the borough council to pay more attention to parish plans.

Councillor Doris Jones said that in a planning application in Middleton St George, there were only six lines of reference to the parish plan in the planning officer's report.

She asked: "If you're going to do years of work, how much clout is a parish plan going to have?"

Ms Adams said parish plans were not formally recognised planning documents and additional work would have to be done to them.

She said: "For those people who have done one, it might be that you have to revise it and work out a process where what you've done can go to wider consultation. If you follow that process we'll be in a position where we can adopt it as a supplementary planning document.