EDDC agreed to allow Tesco to drop all the affordable housing on their Seaton site as Tesco said it would be uneconomic for any developer to build there if affordable housing was included.
The Development Management Committee agreed a “surcharge” on the site so that if it DID make a profit, EDDC would see some of it. When the planning consent was ratified, that clause had disappeared. No-one quite understands where, why or how that happened, but it did.
Bovis are currently building the first 50 of a planned 300+ houses on the site (in addition to the McCarthy and Stone 42 apartment block which is on the site previously earmarked for a hotel).
Bovis announced yesterday that they expect their profits to be up 10% on last year and is forecasting higher dividends for shareholders. They mention that rising house prices have absorbed increased costs and says they have a substantial order book for 2015.
Lucky Bovis, unlucky Seaton, pathetic East Devon District Council – the developer’s friend.
East Devon Watch 
Well, it seems to me that it might be one of several reasons that it disappeared. For example:
1. Tesco removed it from their application and no one in EDDC, either planning officers or DMC members, was awake enough or intelligent enough or diligent enough to spot that it had gone.
2. It was removed by non-publicised agreement between EDDC officers and Tesco, but without DMC members spotting it.
3. It was removed by non-publicised agreement between EDDC leadership and Tesco.
4. Or something else entirely.
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I spoke at the Development Management Committee when Tesco’s/Bovis’s fait accompli that they would be building ZERO affordable housing was rubber-stamped.
I suggested that the DMC had an option to refuse this demand in the first instance, and negotiate. I was genuinely appalled when the Legal Officer, Henry Gordon Lennox, advised the committee that this was not an option. My public speaking contribution had ended, so I could not respond – though I wish I’d tried to.
Yet about a month later a whole Radio 4 You and Yours programme was dedicated to other District Councils who had negotiated with Tesco in precisely the way I had suggested when they too had been confronted with such a fait accompli.
And the result in these cases was that they settled at 10% – a rather better outcome than ZERO. It would have meant affordable housing for 30 families in Seaton.
After the DMC meeting, the officers were going to confirm the “smallprint” – in particular the face-saving overage clause trunpeted as a face-saver by EDDC. Surely this clause should be central to EDDC’s published response to the applicant?
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So, the DMC (with Mr Arnott’s help) did know about this, but were apparently misled by the legal officers who said they could not negotiate, but since other councils have negotiated in similar circumstances, the legal opinion from Mr Lennox would seem to be incorrect. Was this simply a lack of knowledge, or is there some other reason that Mr Lennox gave this advice?
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Are you forwarding this info. to, say, Private Eye? The BBC? How can they be allowed to get away with this without being called to account? There must be some way of ” outing” this , in my opinion, criminal negligence !
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It has indeed already featured in a Channel 4 documentary. But only a judicial review or appearance at an appeal if permission were not granted could challenge the situation and they cost time and much money – something developers rely on.
However, a plan to build on the green wedge between Seaton and Colyford WAS seen off by locals who raised thousands of pounds to hire their own QC, who won their case, in spite of there being an insufficient land supply in East Devon (itself a consequence of having no local plan).
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