THERE is no doubt that Darlington's High Row requires some money spending on it. It needs to spruce up its image, to tidy up its features.

It needs to be rid of the buses which drive around as if they own the place - a town centre should be designed around people, not around the stench of the internal combustion engine.

But does Darlington's High Row need a wholescale change of image? By planning to remove the character-giving Victoriana and to change the idiosyncratic use of space, Darlington Council is agreeing to a wholesale change.

And if that wholescale change were to come to pass, would Darlington town centre lose its current identity, its existing uniqueness?

Would it come to look like any other modern town centre full of the same shops and the same architecture?

The Cornmill Shopping Centre has been a welcome addition to the town's shopping facilities and it has some interesting architectural features - most notably its glazed apex. But once you are inside it, you could be in any other shopping centre anywhere in Britain. It has no distinctive character of its own - will High Row go the same way with flights of uniform steps and an unrepresentative water feature?

Before embarking upon such wholesale and historic change, the council has to have an overwhelming argument to put before the people about why that change is so necessary and beneficial - and why the existing features cannot be restored and conserved.

At the moment, the council does not have an overwhelming argument. It just has a vague, detail-less concept. Yet it expects its people to be happy that this concept should be pushed through, flattening the features that a century of Darlingtonians have grown up regarding as the identity of their home town.

And, of all the councils in the North-East, Darlington has to be the most careful in this respect. Because 30 years ago, the previous generation of councillors tried to force through the Shepherd Plan which would have destroyed all the historic features of the Market Place.

Pressure from townspeople eventually caused the rejection of the Shepherd Plan - thankfully, because, with hindsight, it is now unanimously regarded as a hideous 1960s abomination.

Before the council proceeds this time, it has to present a detailed case to its public, and it has to debate and discuss that case fully in public. And it has to carry its public with it.

It has yet to do any of these things.