Local authorities across the south west will have to ‘be bold’ in setting the tax they demand from people who buy second homes in the area, councillors have been told.

Guy Henderson, local democracy reporter www.radioexe.co.uk 

The proliferation of second homes and holiday lets in popular areas such as Teignbridge, the South Hams and Dartmoor is adding to the pressure on councils to provide more affordable homes for local people.

A number of councils have already voted to charge second home owners double the normal rate of council tax to help fund local services.

But members of the Teignbridge overview and scrutiny committee heard that more action could be needed to enable local people to find homes in their communities.

Cllr Sally Morgan (Lib Dem, Bovey) also serves on the Dartmoor National Park Authority, and delivered her regular report on its work.

On housing, she said the authority was ‘torn’ between looking after the landscape and providing homes.

“We recognise the need for affordable homes,” she said. “It is incredibly expensive to live on Dartmoor. There seems to be a premium to the name. If you want to charge 25 per cent more for your product, put the name ‘Dartmoor’ in front of it, and the same goes for houses.”

She said the pressure created by second homes and holiday lets made it difficult for people to farm on the moor. It could be hard to recruit staff, with workers unable to afford to live locally and having to commute from Newton Abbot or Teignmouth.

“It’s a conundrum,” said Cllr Morgan. “To some extent we have to be bold about how we charge council tax on holiday lets and second homes, and that’s a discussion we have to have across the south west, not just on Dartmoor.

“It’s a constant balance of community, farming and environment.”

Cllr Morgan also raised the alarm over budget pressures on the national park, which receives most of its funding from central government.

“Our reserves are there for a rainy day, and everyone has agreed that it’s tipping down,” she said. “We are not the only park in that situation.

“We can’t afford to be cut any more. We are down to the bone.”
 

The Devon town promised a sewage treatment plant – but given 2,000 hours of spills

Sewage has been dumped for nearly 2,000 hours near a new town in east Devon after South West Water (SWW) backtracked on its plan to build a treatment plant for it.

Kyriakos Petrakos inews.co.uk

SWW had set out plans to build a sewage plant for the new town of Cranbrook, where 3,200 homes have been built over the past 12 years. Instead, SWW opted to upgrade the Countess Wear plant located six miles away, diverting sewage there.

i‘s analysis of the latest Environment Agency (EA) data has found that sewage was dumped from the upgraded Countess Wear plant into the River Exe Estuary – an internationally recognised special protection area – for over 1,050 hours between 2020 and 2023.

Sewage was also discharged from the company’s Clyst Honiton plant – linked to both Cranbrook and Countess Wear – for an additional 935 hours during that period.

While wastewater treatment plants located within a 15-minute drive from Cranbrook and Countess Wear discharged raw sewage for a further 15,472 hours between 2020 and 2023, SWW claims that these spills are not the result of sewage from Cranbrook being processed at Countess Wear.

Residents across east Devon, including locals of the coastal town of Exmouth who are collectively taking SWW to court over water pollution, have condemned the company’s failure to build a new plant after their waterways were blighted by sewage spills.

“With all the problems that we have – and we know that they are related to a lack of infrastructure – it still hasn’t been built,” Exmouth resident and sea swimmer Jo Bateman said.

Ms Bateman, 62, is taking SWW to court over sea sewage discharges that she claims have harmed her health and prevented her from taking daily swims.

“It’s just shocking that they had planning permission to build it, said they would do it and haven’t done it,” she added. “It beggars belief.

“I’m not opposed to the building of new homes, but if you don’t build enough infrastructure to process the sewage, it will come out somewhere and that’s what’s happening.”

SWW has denied that treating sewage from Cranbrook at its Countess Wear site contributed to sewage spills in areas such as Exmouth and Clyst St Mary – a village that flooded with sewage 11 times in 2021 alone.

“Between 2010-2013, we carried out work and improvements on our network to significantly increase treatment capacity at Countess Wear sewage treatment works to support the development of Cranbrook,” a South West Water spokesperson said.

“We can confirm that we have the capacity to treat foul flows from Cranbrook at Countess Wear as there have been significantly less houses built than originally planned for.”

Despite backlash over the unbuilt Cranbrook plant, East Devon District Council (EDDC) plans to expand the new town and approved the development of nearly 2,500 more dwellings earlier this year.

The expansion forms part of its Cranbrook Plan, which was adopted in October 2022 and sets out how the town will eventually house a population of around 20,000.

New neighbourhood centres, schools, sports grounds, a cemetery and pitches for travellers will also be built under the plan.

An EDDC spokesperson told i that the council will “ensure that foul sewerage from the development is appropriately managed and that there is adequate capacity” to treat wastewater from Cranbrook’s expansion.

But the EA has raised concerns over the new development, claiming that “it is not clear which South West Water WwTW [wastewater treatment works] foul drainage will be directed to and whether additional infrastructure” will be necessary.

A SWW spokesperson said: “We are working with EDDC and the EA to understand the pace and scale of development at Cranbrook, which we understand will deliver new properties up to 2035.

“To address this anticipated demand, we are developing our plans to build a new wastewater treatment works by 2035, subject to regulatory approvals.

“This would ensure that the right treatment capacity is available to meet the needs of the wider Cranbrook plan and developments.”

EDDC is to build a separate new town with 8,000 dwellings in east Devon, despite 65 per cent of respondents to a public consultation opposing plans last year.

The council said that it will go ahead with its plans to build the new plan, overriding public opposition, to meet government housing targets.

But Simon Jupp, who was the MP for East Devon when the plans were approved, said councillors “very much jumped the gun to sign off a further new town of 8,000 homes in our district – just weeks before the new national planning policy framework was announced” by the previous Conservative government “which provides the tools to challenge such housing targets”.

He added that the decision was “spectacularly short-sighted and risks further challenges for the district’s water infrastructure”, calling on SWW “to draw up plans for a new plant, with urgency”.

An EDDC spokesperson said: “The previous government’s minor changes to the wording of national planning policy did not change the reality that the council must plan to meet the long-term future housing needs for East Devon through the production of local plans.

“After careful consideration of land available for development across the district over the next few decades, and the need to preserve the beauty of the East Devon and Blackdown Hills National Landscapes and the international importance of the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site, it is proposed to allocate a significant amount of land outside these designated areas for a second new community, east of Clyst St Mary.

“This allocation will be included in the local plan when it is submitted in 2025 to the Secretary of State for examination.”

The Labour Government’s new Water (Special Measures) Bill will introduce harsher penalties for law-breaking wastewater firms, with executives who fail to cooperate or interfere with investigations facing prison sentences of up to two years.

Water firms will be required to publish near real-time information from storm overflow monitors within an hour of each sewage discharge.

The bill will also allow the EA to impose “severe penalties” more quickly, without needing to direct significant resources to lengthy investigations, for offences related to pollution.

Environment Secretary Steve Reed also announced last month that a new Independent Water Commission will be launched to deliver the “largest review of the sector since privatisation”.

i has contacted the EA for a comment.