NOT content with making a mess of the town centre with it’s so-called bus-free pedestrian shopping area, Darlington Town Council has now decided to create further chaos outside the town hall with a proposed bus lay-by.

While I can understand the need to alleviate the local bus congestion in Tubwell Row and provide better facilities for out of town coaches picking up and dropping off passengers at the side of the Dolphin Centre, surely to spend £646,000 can not be justified.

Does the council not ask the views of the local people on what might be suitable? Or do they just bury their head in the sands and do what they want to do? It certainly seems that way.

Why can’t the money be put towards the cost of building a bus station like we used to have and which I believe Darlington deserves and desperately needs.

Then all local and national buses together could use the facility, which would rid the town centre of the hideous congestion not to mention the danger to shoppers in the ”pedestrian areas”.

Alec White, Darlington.