THE Society of Friends in Darlington has hit back at the council's refusal to grant extra car parking on its land.

Last week an application to formalise nine car parking spaces at the back of the meeting house in Skinnergate was rejected by the planning committee.

Planning officers cited a conflict with local plan policy over non-operational town centre parking and some councillors claimed that the planned car park would blight the town's history believing it was too near to founding Quakers' graves.

But the Friends deny the accusation and claim they were kept in the dark over the local planning policy.

Joyce Guthrie, clerk of the Darlington meeting of the Society of Friends, told the D&S Times they were angered by the council's lack of regard for them.

"We are simply asking for some consideration and value of our work.

"The overflow car park is nowhere near the historic part of the site and if councillors had come to have a look they would have seen this.

"In the past the Friends have donated large areas of land to the town. All we are asking for is permission to resurface a small section of the graveyard - that is nowhere near any grave sites - to park a few more cars.

"The blanket policy of no parking in the town centre area has been applied without any regard to our unique circumstances and we were not told about this policy when we first approached planning officers."

The proposals included the use of a special resurfacing mesh as recommended by English Heritage so that the area would remain green all year round.

Joyce Guthrie added: "We have been looking after the burial ground for the past 300 years and extra car parking would enable us to carry on doing so. Members' numbers have decreased over the years but the pressure for local car parking has increased, especially since the pedestrianisation of Skinnergate.

"Now all our members find it difficult to find space within a reasonable distance to the meeting house once our own car park area is full on Saturday mornings."

A council spokesman defended the decision. He said: "We informed the Friends' agent dealing with the application right from the start that it was not council or central government policy to create dedicated car parking in a town centre where there was public parking in close proximity."

Joyce Guthrie said the Friends were now re-considering their position.