That’s how the Sidmouth Herald summed up Gill Cameron-Webb’s letter (Opinion, 1st August, 2014) about EDDC planning procedure at Newton Poppleford.
Thank you to Gill for sending the text of her letter, as follows:

‘Developers make such massive profits from housing developments that they’re often willing to sacrifice some profit to provide ‘sweeteners’ to persuade councils to look favourably on their application. This can result in corruption, so planning laws prevent developers from ‘buying planning permission’. These demand that any ‘sweeteners’ provided by developers must be in proportion to their development. As the Doctors Surgery promised as part of the KAW development could service a population of 5300 (3 times the population of Newton Pop) it’s massively disproportionate to the KAW development.
When EDDC councillors first demanded that the doctors surgery be made a condition of the KAW development, Planning Officers failed to advise them that this was unlawful and that the developers can never be forced to deliver it. Although residents repeatedly warned EDDC of this illegality over 5 months, EDDC persistently refused to acknowledge it until a Judicial Review forced them to quash the planning permission.
The key benefit of the Judicial Review was to ensure councillors were properly advised of planning law next time they considered the KAW application in May 2014. At this stage EDDC officers and councillors should have treated KAW as a major development of 40 houses in an AONB which had received 382 formal objections from the public. They should have dealt with it exactly the same as the Badger Close development and rejected it for the same reasons they rejected Badger Close. Instead they chose to authorise KAW in the hope that the developers might keep their ‘promise’ to deliver a Doctors Surgery that they can never legally enforce.
If Newton Poppleford ends up with 40 houses and no Doctors Surgery, the blame will lie entirely with EDDC planning officers and Councillors for accepting the word of a developer on a hope and a prayer.’