“How ironical that a letter in last week’s Simouth Herald from Mrs Ann Liverton, former EDDC Tory councillor, should accuse independent councillors of East Devon Alliance (EDA) of not supporting local farming. (30 October, Opinion, “Must do better”).

She seems unaware that a key motive for the creation of EDA in 2012 was to try to protect what was left of the District’s prime farmland from being concreted over in the frenzy of destructive development that was assailing it.

In 2008 it was Mrs Liverton’s Conservative group on East Devon District Council that voted to relax planning rules to make it easier for agricultural land in rural areas to be converted into “business parks” often housing noisy and polluting industrial activities.

In 2009 she was a member of the planning (“Development Management”) committee that gave the green light for the massive –and continuing- expansion of Hill Barton and Greendale Barton business parks.

Many residents of Woodbury Salterton in Raleigh Ward were brought close to despair by the consequent loss of farmland and the destruction of their quiet rural environment.