The National Planning Policy Statement requires councils to alert other councils around them when it seems that they cannot build enough houses in their own district and to ask those councils to take some or all of their overspill.

Exeter, of course, now has not only Cranbrook to take its overspill in East Devon but also the thousands of extra houses agreed by EDDC’s Development
Management Committee in the EDDC area adjoining Pinhoe.

Now we have an application for (initially?) 300 houses at Uplyme to accommodate the “needs” of Lyme Regis (perhaps for more second homes?) on the A3052 at Uplyme in East Devon.

It might seem now, that having accommodated Lyme and Exeter we have run out of space for our own houses.

So, what about South Somerset which conveniently shares a Chief Executive with us and is also coincidentally in similar trouble with its Local Plan.

There are plenty of green fields between Axminster and Chard (particularly around Yarcombe in the Blackdown Hills near the border) and so convenient for commuting to Exeter, Taunton and beyond, especially if the A303 is widened.

Why hasn’t the Chief Executive been talking to himself?