The Western Morning News has recently carried the story that Westcountry cities of Exeter and Taunton were among 40 identified for massive expansion by David Rudlin, an urban designer who scooped the Wolfson prize, the second-biggest economics prize after the Nobel.
His award-winning proposals, which earned him £250,000, included circular developments, with parks and allotments, of up to 150,000 people per town.
Mr Rudlin argued models pioneered in Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Germany should be adopted by Britain which could “take a confident bite out of the greenbelt”.
But here is Housing Minister Brandon Lewis’ response to Wolfson Prize:
“We are committed to protecting the green belt from development as an important protection against urban sprawl – today’s proposal from Lord Wolfson’s competition is not government policy and will not be taken up.
Instead, we stand ready to work with communities across the country who have ideas for a new generation of garden cities and we have offered support to areas with locally-supported plans that come forward. But we do not intend to follow the failed example of top-down eco-towns from the last administration. Picking housing numbers out of thin air and imposing them on local communities builds nothing but resentment. This government has abolished regional quangos’ role in planning – instead, we have empowered elected local councils to determine where new homes should and shouldn’t go.”
Picking housing numbers out of thin air and imposing them on local communities builds nothing but resentment. Hmmm!
Are our local Conservatives “on message” with their Conservative Minister?
East Devon Watch 
So which is worse? Picking numbers out of thin air or NOT picking numbers out of thin air? No – this is NOT a joke question!
The biggest problem we face in East Devon today is the lack of a Local Plan. The reason that we don’t have a plan is that we don’t have an agreed set of housing demand numbers. So picking numbers out of thin air rather than waiting for the Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA) which was due in last June but now appears likely to be delayed until at least the first part of next year might actually be better because we would get a Local pLan quicker.
Oh hold on, wasn’t the issue with EDDC’s last attempt at getting the Local Plan approved that the Planning Inspector felt that the housing numbers had been plucked out of thin air???
So why, oh why, oh why, is the EDDC CEO, Mark Williams, refusing to acknowledge the numbers put forward by three separate sets of consultants and insisting that his (higher!!!!) number (plucked apparently out of thin air) is the correct one?
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