DOMINIC Cummings refused to resign last night and said he does not regret his 264-mile drive to Durham in the middle of lockdown.

In a bizarre and unprecedented press conference in the rose garden at Number 10, the Prime Minister’s chief adviser insisted he didn’t think he was better than anyone else.

He also said he’d no intention of resigning, blaming much of the row on the media.

Cummings, for the first time, also confirmed that he had been seen in Barnard Castle on Easter Sunday, but, he added, the reason he was there was because he wanted to see if his coronavirus-riddled eyes were well enough to drive to London.

However, he flatly denied reports he’d been in Durham a week later.

Newspaper reports suggested he’d been spotted admiring bluebells in Houghall Woods.

Cummings’ statement came as acting Durham Police Crime and Victims’ Commissioner Steve White asked the local force to “establish the facts concerning any breach of the law”.

He said there was “a plethora of additional information circulating in the public domain which deserves appropriate examination”.

The purpose of the hour-long session was presumably to try and calm the considerable anger that has brewed over the weekend after details of his breaching of strict coronavirus restrictions first came to light.

If anything, the lengthy statement and the testy question and answer session with journalists afterwards has made the situation much worse.

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Cummings confirmed he had driven to Durham while his wife was suffering from coronavirus. He rejected claims he was breaking guidance, as there were “exceptional circumstances”.

He said by travelling to a cottage on his father’s farm he would be able to have his son looked after by a 17-year-old niece if he too was to become incapacitated by coronavirus.

“I don’t regret what I did,” he insisted. “I was trying to balance all of these very complicated things.”

Cummings said he “wasn’t looking for loopholes”.

“It’s not a simple matter of regulations ... It doesn’t say you should stay at home in all circumstances.”

Asked why he was not resigning, he said: “There is understandable anger but a lot of that anger is based on reports in the media that have not been true. It’s extremely regrettable that the media were told some of these things that were wrong and reported them anyway.”

He later added: “I have not offered to resign … I have not considered it.”

Cummings also revealed that his son needed to go to hospital during the stay in Durham.

The boy was taken in by ambulance, along with his wife, and stayed overnight.

The next day Cummings left isolation to pick them up.

He said the trip to Durham was not mentioned in articles for the Spectator written by him and his wife about their lockdown experience because he was worried about his security.

Cummings also said he had not told the Prime Minister where he was going as Johnson had “a million things on his plate”.

Explaining the trip to Barnard Castle, Cummings said that he had wanted to return to London to rejoin colleagues working on the Government’s coronavirus response, and had sought medical advice and been told it was safe for him to do so.

But his wife was concerned because his eyesight appeared to have been affected by the coronavirus infection which had left him in bed for much of the previous fortnight.

He said she “didn’t want to risk a nearly 300 mile drive with our child, given how ill I had been”.

So instead they drove the 30 miles to the outskirts of the town, stopping 15 minutes by a riverbank.