THE “closing down” signs on Darlington’s Binns have been taken down. It is indeed “brilliant” news that a deal has been down between House of Fraser and the building’s new owners to keep the store open.

It is a bookend of High Row. If it had fallen derelict in the run-up to Christmas, it would have cast a dark shadow over the shopping experience, and, with a bookend gone, everyone would have been wondering which shop would be the next to fall.

We genuinely wish Binns happy and prosperous trading – as we do all of our town centre traders. Without them, the places that we call home and which shape our identities would be ghost towns.

But perhaps this brush with mortality should remind the shopkeepers and the town centre managers of how close we were to losing such an important tenant.

And the same questions remain as brought Binns to this position in the first place. It is in a massive department store that was built for the 1930s retail environment but now, nearly 100 years later, it is operating in very different times. Parts of the building need alternative uses and, with Binns still in place, now is the time to work towards finding what they are.

With online shopping eating into Binns’s market from one side, out-of-town shopping – which includes free parking – is eating at its other side. From St Helen’s Auckland to Scotch Corner, planners have given their consent for that competition to grow so now the authorities must help Binns and its building survive.