EDDC produced the above press release headline as spin:
Unfortunately, the truth is more likely that EDDC is so keen on its developers and developing anything and everything, that neighbourhoods are scrambling as fast as they can to protect what few green and pleasant places they still have left after the Local Plan hoovered most of them up, before developers get their sticky mitts on them!
East Devon Watch 
Absolutely.
As time went by without a Local Plan in place, with developers able to use this to get planning permission to build in inappropriate locations, parishes felt that a Neighbourhood Plan was an alternative way of protecting special places and a localism alternative that allowed local people to have an input when EDDC was ignoring them.
Now that the Local Plan is in place, and we know just how much effort EDDC went to to maximise the housing growth numbers (and having looked at the draft, the numbers are actually significantly higher than the headline of 17,100, and approximately 3-4 times as many homes as East Devon has historically built per year!!), local parishes still feel that they need a Neighbourhood Plan because EDDC’s Local Plan does such a p**s poor job of protecting them against over-development, or inappropriate architecture or loss of special green spaces.
Yet, the populace still votes Conservative in local elections of all sorts despite this abuse of democracy by the current leadership. I guess it is not just Love that is blind – but democracy too.
LikeLike
Swire is very obviously a weapons grade political trougher sans pareil…….but he has no real say round here……which is why he was looking into drains in Ottery.
So…..the questions over all these EDDC planning proposals are;
a) who holds the power to make the decisions?
b) who benefits from them?
c) what is it that they are not telling us?
d) is the plan at Sidford really about logistics wharehousing (long way from the M5 isn’t it really)? Or will the proposal suddenly change to become a housing estate………surely, there’s a lot more profit in that.
e) what are the long-term infrastructural plans……….roads, schools and other services?
LikeLike