A plan that will influence where thousands of homes in a Devon district can be built over the next 15 years has suffered a delay.
East Devon’s draft local plan, which is aiming to identify where at least 21,000 homes will go between now and 2042, was meant to be submitted to the government next month but now might not be sent off until the end of the year.
Campaigners had repeatedly questioned whether the plan was ready, and had queried the prospect of a June submission date because of their view that various vital pieces of work remained incomplete.
Regulatory changes by the government mean that East Devon District Council can now submit its draft local plan by year-end without suffering any negative consequences.
And while the council has said it is hoping not to need all that time, it has taken the opportunity to delay its submission to tackle some major tasks it needs to complete.
These include a transport assessment in the west of the district to ensure there is a plan for how the local roads will cope with the explosion of homes there – notably due to the forthcoming new town of Marlcombe – and an analysis of how the district’s nature will be impacted due to the extra homes.
The latter includes air quality impact assessments at the Pebblebed Heaths and a River Axe nutrient mitigation strategy.
Resident John Hamill, a frequent critic of the draft local plan process, said the plan was “never going to be ready” for June, but felt the extra time was “both a lifeline and a threat”.
“The lifeline is the opportunity – at long last – to write the essential documents and to allow the public to comment from an informed basis on the plan that will be submitted for inspection,” he said.
“The dark side, however, is that it allows opportunistic development to be progressed.”
He claimed that the prospective site for hundreds of homes that he lives near – officially named Exmo_20 in the draft local plan – was now being scoped out by developers with “some pretty drawings and an invitation to a webinar where they will present their ideas” for the site that is near St John’s on the outskirts of Exmouth.
Fellow resident and frequent draft local plan campaigner, Nigel Humphrey, claimed the issues that existed at the start “have still not been resolved”.
His focus, too, is on the potential 700-home site at St John’s, which is close to the protected Pebblebed Heaths.
He once again questioned the purpose of a 400-metre buffer zone aimed at mitigating harm to the heaths if a road would be allowed to be built through it.
“You now have an additional seven months to do something about it, so I ask again for you to seriously reconsider Exmo_20,” he told the council’s strategic planning committee (Tuesday 5 May).
And another Exmo_20 objector, Thomas Shillitoe, stressed that “we all want a plan that can be adopted”, but that the current draft one was “not ready” and said the council now had time to “submit a sound and legally compliant plan”.
“I hear many say that the high [housing] numbers are from central government, and if you remove a site you need to find another but that isn’t true,” he said.
“You are voluntarily choosing to decimate more of East Devon’s countryside than Westminster requires – why aren’t you telling your constituents that?”.
Another resident, Liz Lees, also raised fears about the so-called green wedge – open land between two conurbations – being eroded if prospective sites near Sidford were included in the draft local plan.
“We are extremely concerned that once this site is accepted for development, this then sets a precedent for others, such as [prospective] site 6B, to follow with a further development of 238 homes,” she said.
“The irreversible harm this will have on our beautiful countryside will permanently degrade the character of this statutory protected area, which provides significant value to the local economy through tourism and wellbeing.”
Ed Freeman, an assistant director in East Devon’s planning department, said he “understood there are lots of concerns” about the plan.
“Those have been expressed consistently throughout the process, they have been heard and have been considered,” he said.
“The report today highlights the different meetings and consultations we have had and other feedback. There is an audit trail to show we have considered these, but there are still some outstanding objections to the plan, and they may now need to be considered during the [government’s] examination process.”
Mr Freeman told the committee that he was “not recommending we revisit site allocations”, meaning that he did not think different sites to the ones already suggested should be considered.
The council said it had received 3,114 responses to its second consultation on the draft local plan, and that while these were supposed to focus on changes made between different drafts, many drilled in on the St John’s site and Exmouth more broadly.
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