When maximum, minimum and average figures were compiled why was maximum chosen, as maximums can be skewed.
Why was the final figure designated as the MINIMUM number to be built if maximum numbers were chosen?
Where are these houses to be built: sites for such numbers are not identified nor the number of houses per site. This will encourage very large initial developments with no ability to refuse (aaah). Only Clyst St Mary seems to have designated (large) numbers.
Where is the Community Infrastructure Levy document which specifies the cost per square metre of development to support local and district-wide infrastructure for these massive increases?
What is our current 5/6 year land supply?
With the future of the inter-modal freight terminal uncertain why is this not designated as extra employment land?
East Devon Watch 
I suspect that this is only the tip of the iceberg of questions which the new draft Local Plan does not answer.
The obvious question I ask is, with a majority of East Devon designated as AONB, how we are going to meet the requirement for building 950 homes per year without:
1. Major housing projects in AONBs; or
2. Excessive growth of existing towns and villages?
Whilst I appreciate that all areas of the UK need to contribute to the growth in homes needed, surely there needs to be some consideration given to the most appropriate areas to build them, and in particular to reduced the building in AONBs and spreading the remainder across the whole of the UK and not just the rest of East Devon.
Since the Planning Inspector is likely to ask these questions and then reject the new draft as still significantly incomplete, it is perhaps just as well that we ask them before he does as EDDC might then have a chance to address them before it goes in for another review.
On the other hand, if EDDC are going to meet the timetable set by the Planning Inspector, they will not have time to address all the missing bits of the document, and put it out for consultation whilst still meeting the Planning Inspector’s time-table, which suggests that either EDDC are going to have to stand-up and explain to the Inspector why they need YET more time, or submit a 2nd draft Local Plan which is known to be deficient in many respects and which will delay the adoption of the local plan still further, and almost certainly into 2016 if not 2017.
Frankly, EDDC leadership needs to get its act together, and Paul Diviani needs to start to stand-up for East Devon and push back on the housing numbers and the way that they are allocated and not tell us that an increase from 321 houses per year at the start of this administration to 950 houses per year now is “a modest increase”!!!
Is this the real meaning of Greater Exeter? That East Devon and Teignbridge districts are to be so covered with new housing that they become suburbs of Exeter?
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Interestingly, although the revised CIL charging schedule doesn’t appear as a paper for the meeting of the Development Management Committee on Monday 23rd March 2015, in the East Devon Press releases about CIL at:
http://eastdevon.gov.uk/planning/planning-policy/community-infrastructure-levy-cil/cil-examination/latest-news-on-the-cil-examination/
There is a reference to the paper that is to be presented at the DMC next Monday, which is:
Click to access cil-revised-draft-charging-schedule-13-march-2015-reduced-pdf.pdf
Perhaps someone who has their name down to ask a question at the meeting can challenge the discussion of this paper on the grounds that it wasn’t properly published with the DMC Agenda and papers for the meeting. Then they won’t be able to consider it at the DMC and so they won’t be able to approve the DMC findings at the emergency Council Meeting on the 25th March.
What a shambles all this haste is!
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Comparing the new document that I refer to above, with the CIL charging maps submitted by EDDC for consultation in June 2013, it appears that Cranbrook is now proposed to have a retail exemption (£0) zone where it didn’t before and Honiton has an increased area of £80 residential zone at the extreme south west of the town. I can’t easily spot any other differences.
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I have also been struggling over the past week to try to understand the revised draft Local Plan; clawing my way through amendments in blue, amendments in red, amendments which have a single strike through and those with a double strike through. It has not been helped by finding that most of the links to key supporting documents have now been broken through the new EDDC web site. My objective was to try to find out what this all means to East Devon and to form a view as to whether it is likely to satisfy the Planning Inspector.
The previous plan that failed to pass inspection covered the period 2006 to 2026. The revised plan covers the period 2013 to 2031. So someone needs to account for the intervening seven wasted years.
The old plan set a target of 15,000 homes to be built. The new draft Local Plan has set a minimum target of 17,100 to be built between 2013 and 2031, possibly as high as around 18,400.
It is hoped 8,000 of these can be built in Cranbrook but the draft plan gives few details of where the rest will go. All the plan (Para 3.9) says is: “East Devon will provide for more balanced communities where homes and jobs are in better alignment by providing major employment, housing and community facilities in Exmouth and vital housing growth at Axminster, with more modest growth at Budleigh Salterton, Honiton, Ottery St Mary, Seaton and Sidmouth….” Elsewhere figures of around 1,500 for Axminster and 1,200 for Exmouth are mentioned. So this leaves between 6,400 and 7,700 housing sites unallocated.
But there is a snag with using Exmouth as a major growth site concerned with its proximity to three European Sites of Environmental Significance. As pointed out in para 10.3: “The implementation of proposals set out in the Exmouth Masterplan will need to demonstrate Habitat Regulations compliance through provision of appropriate mitigation in accordance with the ‘South-east Devon European Site Mitigation Strategy’ or as otherwise can be demonstrated to be technically robust.” In short a way has to be found to keep people from visiting the most beautiful parts of our district; but visiting the countryside is what makes this an attractive location for people to live in. Suitable mitigation plans have not yet been agreed.
One of the main question is what happens to all those sites that have been given planning permission in the recent Developers Land Grab rather coyly described as “commitments” but then struck through in the table on pages 34 and 35. Will the Inspector allow these to be included?
The previous plan was criticised by the Inspector for divvying up housing targets on the basis of a percentage of what is there already, rather than using evidence. (Probably the only way to do things when the housing targets have little to do with satisfying local need). The response has been to swing completely the other way, as described above, in a plan with few numbers which looks like it has been cobbled together overnight to meet a deadline.
Will this satisfy the Inspector? Whether it does or doesn’t this draft plan, in my humble opinion, is so vague as to let developers continue to successfully challenge any planning refusal.
I fear we have been let down again.
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