A WOMAN who says a council-run nursery forced her elderly father from his home is opposing its expansion.

Irene Ord says noise and traffic at Woodburn plant nursery, in Hummersknott, Darlington, contributed to her 81-year-old father John Simpson's ill health until he eventually moved away.

Today, Mrs Ord will speak at a Darlington Borough Council planning meeting to oppose an application to build an extra tunnel there for housing plants. She says the tunnel is likely to cause a 50 per cent increase in business for the nursery, meaning more noise and traffic on land to the rear of her home in Coniscliffe Road.

"My father was made increasingly depressed and seriously ill with having to live daily beside noise and mess," she said.

" He was living there by himself and was unable to sleep. He has now moved to Scotland to live with my sister. I was born in the house where he lived and I was planning to retire there in a year or so. But if the application is given permission, which I expect it to be, I shall have to make a decision whether I do want to stay there."

The nursery, in Salutation Road, supplies plants and trees throughout the borough, as well as to other authorities in the country. Mrs Ord spent the weekend posting letters about the proposed tunnel to neighbouring residents.

"I am the only objector to the proposal, but this is not surprising, since no public notice was displayed at the development site," she said.

"If this development is allowed, further proposals could follow and be easily agreed.

"There will be lorries and dumper trucks in and out of the site all day long and it will be unbearable to live there."

Officers have recommended that permission be given for the tunnel for a five-year period.

A council spokesman said every resident who would be able to see the proposed tunnel had received a letter.

"The nursery has been a working nursery since the houses were built in Victorian times," he added.

"It really is a tranquil place.