He goes on to urge people to engage with the consultation process with East Devon District Council. 

He’s right but here’s how got into this mess.

It’s pure coincidence that last week Owl drew attention, once again, to the role played by Karime Hassan in facilitating the “build, build, build” strategy of the Tory EDDC administrations from 2005 to their collapse in 2020 – see Revolving Doors.

Owl remembers Paul Diviani, alongside the faithful Philip Skinner, as the architect and driving force behind this strategy. It resulted in the current Local Plan having a development target of 950 houses/year, based on an aggressive “jobs led policy on” scenario.  Where studies showed only around 580 houses/year would be required to satisfy purely demographic and normal migration growth trends. 

This is an uplift of 370 or 64% on what is strictly necessary and is the target that the current EDDC coalition has inherited and the basis on which the government thinks reasonable to set its own growth strategy.

On infrastructure, especially provision of sewage treatment, the problem local authorities have is that, although they are the planning authority, they can’t successfully defend an appeal against planning rejection unless supported by the Environment Agency (e.g. phosphate levels in the Axe) or South West Water.

SWW rarely claim they can’t put in the required resources – indeed promised new capacity for Cranbrook.

David Reed MP  text of facebook post six days ago

I am not against home building. Of course we need more homes for the next generation so that they can live near their friends, family and work.

However, we have built at scale in #ExmouthandExeterEast without proper, joined up thinking around infrastructure and the usage of local services.

The fact that people in Cranbrook are only just getting a supermarket, after years of campaigning, is shameful.

We must not put local people in this position again, so please do engage with the consultation process with East Devon District Council.

From my perspective, if new infrastructure and local services are not baked into the planning from the start, I will be strongly pushing back against this proposal.

The two MPs for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) and Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) are pressing the case for a new railway station at Wellington and Cullompton. 

Adam Manning www.midweekherald.co.uk 

Gideon Amos and Richard Foord met with the Minister for Rail, Lord Peter Hendy, at his office on September 19, to discuss the Wellington and Cullompton Stations Campaign.

In a joint statement after the meeting, the two MPs said: “We presented a detailed and evidenced case for the project, based on the jobs, housing and growth which would come to the area as a result.

“In response, the Minister listened carefully and was encouraged with the progress made to date and with the initiative taken by the local councils who contributed all the initial funding to get the project off the ground in the first place.

“The Minister promised he would progress the current review of new station and railway projects urgently, and we will continue to push at the highest levels for the reopening of Wellington and Cullompton at every opportunity we get.”

Lord Hendy, formerly chair of Network Rail, told the meeting that the review of projects had been launched because the previous Conservative administration ran up unfunded promises to reopen railways which had created a £2.9billion projected overspend in the Department for Transport alone in the current financial year.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves assured Mr Amos in Parliament in July that the project “will go ahead”.

But announcing a review the next day, Secretary of State for Transport Louise Haigh said: “Communities up and down the country have been given hope for new transport infrastructure, with no plans or funds to deliver them.

“I am determined that we build the transport infrastructure to drive economic growth and opportunity in every part of the country and to deliver value for money for taxpayers.

“That ambition requires a fundamental reset to how we approach capital projects – with public trust, industry confidence and government integrity at its heart.”

Following today’s meeting Mr Amos added: “I’m determined we see the Wellington station project, first proposed in the House of Commons by my Lib Dem predecessor Jeremy Browne, successfully completed.

“Richard and I will now be working with our respective councils to maximise support for the project and the Minster has agreed to hear further representations from us on this before the review is complete.”