WITH others I have spent the last two days at Leeds combined court listening to the arguments regarding Darlington Council’s decision to relocate the library out of the Crown Street building.

Noticeably there was no representation from the decision making Labour group to listen to the arguments.

Given that one of the primary suppositions was that the Council had a closed mind and were not listening then their non-attendance merely supports that view.

The arguments presented also focused on the unfairness of the Council’s actions in not engaging with campaigners to either assess alternatives or understand concerns.

Bizarrely the defence was not whether they had been unfair but rather focused on legal definitions of unfairness and whether they had been unfair enough.

We hope to win the legal case but we have certainly won the moral case and we would once again ask the Council to do the right thing and engage to reappraise the options.

Compressing the Library into the Dolphin Centre reduces both the Library offer and the Leisure offer within the town centre at a time when we should be developing both to support overall footfall and help our retailers.

Paul Howell, Darlington