UK's Biggest Eco Village

A PLAN to create the UK's biggest eco village on the site of a disused wool factory have been unveiled. The former Paton and Baldwins factory, on the outskirts of Darlington, will be transformed into a flagship ecological community.

The vision would result in the 110-acre Lingfield Point business park, as the site is known, being transformed with more low energy offices, eco homes and leisure facilities powered by renewable energy.

Owners Marchday, who have spent £25 million transforming the site since 1998, want to restore into one of the most prominent in the North-East. Director John Orchard told the Northern Echo thats 2,500 people will work there within the next two years and that he hoped some of them will be able to live in the new environmentally friendly homes.

There would also be sustainable transport links, such as bus services, all designed to protect the environment. Central to the vision is the new Darlington Eastern Transport Corridor, now under construction, which will link the A66 to central Darlington.

This long-awaited road should open in the spring of next year and will transform Lingfield Point from Darlington's back door to its front door.

Marchday is planning to regenerate more former factory buildings that have fallen into disrepair. Among them are the Powerhouse, the original boiler house and turbine hall, and the Soap Dock, which was used for dust collection.