UNCERTAINTY again surrounds Binns – sorry, House of Fraser – on Darlington’s High Row as the building is again up for sale.

We have, of course, been here before, in 2019, and the department store survived that speculation and is still trading.

But it is worth reminding ourselves how important this huge concern is to the look and feel of Darlington town centre, and how fragile our shopping economy is – Boots, a few doors down is to close soon, so there will be several empty frontages on even the premier street.

And once something as vast as a department store goes it is hard to see a way back – when Bishop Auckland lost Beales in the massive co-op building, it was the final nail in Newgate Street’s tumble into expensive dereliction.

However, these massive stores are survivors from a bygone age of on-street shopping which is, increasingly, being replaced by on-line buying, an irreversible change.

Darlington centre would struggle to take another gym, as the sales brochure suggests for the corner site, and surely town’s the bar/restaurant market is also saturated. Turning the 1930s department store into private residences is the obvious answer, but no one is going to make a journey into town to visit a block of flats so footfall in the other shops would suffer.

It is, therefore, really important that Binns lives to fight another day – and, should the Scotch Corner designer outlet retail park open in 2026, it is easy to see what its next battle is going to be. Good luck to House of Fraser – your town centre still needs you!