A FORMER mayor is threatening to report her council to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister for allegedly ignoring a key document when making a planning decision.

Councillor Doris Jones claims Darlington Borough Council failed to take into consideration a parish plan drawn up by villagers in Middleton St George when considering an application for eight new homes. The authority's planning committee approved the development, in the grounds of Thorntree House, Middleton Lane, at its meeting yesterday afternoon.

Councillors were told that 105 letters and a petition containing 277 signatures had been lodged in opposition to the homes, which would be within the Middleton One Row conservation area.

But a report by planning officers recommended the scheme be allowed and said the parish plan did not carry any statutory weight.

Coun Jones told the meeting: "My major concern is the fact that the village plan has been given so little importance in this report. There is overwhelming opposition to further new housing development. That is a conservation area and will become nothing more than a small housing estate. I find that absolutely deplorable."

Committee member Coun Gerald Lee said the Government's Countryside Agency had encouraged villages to draw up parish plans and the plans should be taken seriously.

"The people of Middleton St George are saying 'enough is enough'," he said, proposing the scheme be rejected.

But committee chairman Councillor Frank Robson urged members to approve it, adding that many of the issues raised in the parish plan had been covered in the officers' report.

Coun Jones said afterwards: "We are going to take it further. Why is the Government spending money on encouraging villages to draw up plans if local authorities are going to ignore them?"

Alison Leach, who organised the petition, said: "We are absolutely devastated."