Major ‘educatering’ plan splits community opinion

A plan to build a major ‘educatering’ facility in East Devon will be debated by planners due to a split in opinion on the proposals.

Residents have been mainly opposed to the proposed scheme mimicking the view of planning officers, but some are in support, including one of the area’s councillors.
Goosemoor, a family-run business that stretches back as far as 1957 to wholesale fruit and vegetable merchant Colin Dart and the firm C.J. Dart Exeter, wants to build the education and catering facility on land north east of Parkfield Cottages at Pink House Corner, in Lympstone, which is outside Exmouth.
Planning officers at East Devon District Council are recommending refusal, largely because they don’t believe the facility would be in the right location, prompting environmental and landscape concerns.
However, the council acknowledges the scheme could create around 100 jobs and bring nearly £10.7 million in economic benefit to East Devon.
The reason the scheme is going before the planning committee next week (Tuesday 21 October) is because Councillor Ben Ingham (Conservative, Woodbury & Lympstone), whose ward the application sits in, supports the scheme in spite of the planning officer recommendation to refuse it.
“After full and careful consideration, I recommend this application for approval for the following reasons,” he states in a written submission ahead of the meeting.
“In recent years, specifically the last 10, EDDC has done little and achieved even less to identify or provide employment land within this ward for the benefit of our communities.
“Yet during the same period of time, many houses have been built here for new residents.
“Here is an opportunity to redress the imbalance and provide badly needed employment opportunities. This will support both economic and social sustainability (prerequisites for the golden thread of sustainability) within the Woodbury & Lympstone ward and East Devon District.”
He added he was “regrettably confident” more new homes would be required in his ward, and yet “so far no credible attempt has been made to provide jobs for villagers”.
While only five residents support the scheme out of 28 who have written into the council to give their views, they cite that the educatering concept has been successful, want to support the idea of educating young people and commend a business model that promotes food and health.
Plus, they say, the business already operates within 4 kilometres of the application site but at a location it has now outgrown.
Opponents, however, echo the council planning officers’ concerns around landscape harm, highway safety, the loss of farmland and insufficient community involvement.
According to East Devon, the ‘educatering’ branch of Goosemore is a successful and growing part of the business and is based on providing schools with the specific fresh ingredients to prepare meals at the school on a daily basis and to an agreed menu.
“There is an emphasis on high quality and locally sourced produce,” the council states.
“This application also proposes to provide an area of land to grow food and a cooking classroom where schools can visit to see/pick food from the land to then prepare in the classroom.”
The application will be debated at the planning committee on Tuesday 21 October.