A RAILWAY heritage charity has challenged the mayor of the Tees Valley to find a way of bringing a historic inn into community ownership. Campaigners have been trying to save the former Fighting Cocks pub in Middleton St George, near Darlington from being turned into a Sainsbury’s. They were dealt a hammer blow in June when Darlington Borough Council granted planning permission for the pub, which had been renamed Platform 1, to be converted into a shop. The Friends of the Stockton & Darlington Railway, who are growing increasingly exasperated as planning decisions along the 26-mile length of the line have on several occasions failed to protect the heritage of the world’s first modern railway, have now written to Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen asking the Tees Valley Combined Authority to buy the freehold and transfer it to the community pub group.
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