Register office closure 'a significant blow'
SuppliedThe threatened closure of a registration office would be a "significant blow" to residents, a town council has said.
Barnard Castle Register Office is scheduled to close as early as next year due to a low number of ceremonies and wider budget constraints.
Joanne Howey, who got married there in 2012, said taking the service away was "ridiculous", while Barnard Town Council said it was "deeply saddened".
But Durham County Council said the site was only being used for celebrations and did not offer "the same high standards" as an alternative venue, The Story in Durham, where ceremony provision will be focused.
It said 13 weddings had been booked at the Barnard Castle space up to the end of December and would still go ahead.
But Howey, from Staindrop, said the venue had not been advertised enough.
"A lot of people don't realise you could get married in there, but it's such a lovely little place for a little ceremony, just to have close friends and family," the former councillor for Bishop Auckland's Woodhouse Close ward said.
"I've got such fantastic memories of that day. It's really sad every time I drive past it, I see it and I remember what happened there and it's just so lovely."
The Reform UK-run local authority said no births and deaths had been registered in the Barnard Castle office since 2020, with 61 appointments made over the financial year.
Barnard Castle Town Council said the office had been "a vital cornerstone" for residents for decades and the potential loss of the ceremony space was "a significant blow to the town's civic infrastructure".
"To see these services moved further away is a loss for the rural accessibility of our residents," Mayor Paul Ing said.
SuppliedHowey said people without a car faced a challenge to access alternative services.
"People need somewhere local to go and the more you take things like that away from a town the more reasons people have not to go," she said.
Durham County Council's director of legal and democratic services Helen Bradley said the local authority did not own the office and was not able to meet its costs.
"Because of budget constraints and the low number of ceremonies held at that site, we're unable to invest in improving the building or sustain its future running costs as a registration office, but we will work with the owners as they seek to bring forward other uses," she said.
Telephone registration of deaths was expected to be available from September, with online birth registration set to follow in the next couple of years, Bradley said.
The town council said essential registration services, such as births and deaths, were expected to continue via the Customer Access Point at the Witham Building on a part-time basis.
