In a post on this blog on 21 Feb it was mentioned that at the public hearing into the local plan the EDDC Planning Officer read out paragraph 1 of the NPPF to the Planning Inspector. This is all about encouraging communities to get involved in the planning process. The Planning Officer then went on to say that communities were the best judge of where developments should go.

As part of complying with the Local plan, due process of consultation had been followed in East Budleigh with regard to choosing one of three sites all of which had been identified by EDDC in consultation with land owners as suitable. The people overwhelmingly preferred a brown field site at the village entry to the South by a majority of 68.5% (site C307). However in the published plan, EDDC introduced a series of spurious arguments to reject this site despite it being previously deemed suitable, and chose instead site C059 a field of agricultural Grade 1 land below Syon House; on the “wrong” side of the main road, with a site entry at a known accident black spot; and a site with known flooding issues. This site had been favoured by only 29.7% of the community.

We can now, perhaps, begin to understand why EDDC did this.

Last week Leigh Rix, Head of Property and Land at Clinton Devon Estates (CDE), attended the annual parish meeting at East Budleigh and attempted to explain why the field below Syon House was the site CDE would now be putting forward. CDE offered all three of the suitable sites in the original consultation so do we surmise that the decision to reject the brownfield site and ignore local opinion lies at their door rather than EDDC’s?

By all accounts Leigh Rix failed to present a convincing case. The meeting was curtailed before all had spoken and there is a rising sense of anger in the community that the consultation process has been a sham.

Why should CDE prefer to sacrifice grade 1 agricultural land in an AONB before a brownfield site? Why should EDDC planners go along with this bearing in mind what the NPPF says?
NPPF paragraph 111 says “planning policies and decisions should encourage the effective use of land by reusing land that has been previously developed (brownfield land).”

NPPF paragraph 112 says “Local planning authorities should take into account the economic and other benefits of the best and most versatile agricultural land. Where significant development of agricultural land is demonstrated to be necessary, local planning authorities should seek to use areas of poor quality land in preference to that of higher quality”

It is also instructive to look at CDE website to get a measure of their mission statement. It reads:

Doing our part for our part of the world. Clinton Devon Estates is a 21st century rural estate and property business. Responsible stewardship and sustainable development are at the heart of everything we do. Our mission is: “to secure the long term prosperity of the Estates and the people who live and work on them in ways which care for the countryside and engage with the wider community”

Ostensibly this application is for 15 houses but we fear that in order to satisfy the Inspector villages such as East Budleigh will have to take many more houses than this.

So does site C059 offer more opportunities for expansion?

Also, is CDE grabbing the opportunity that the current relaxed planning regime offers to gain planning permission for grade 1 agricultural land knowing it can always get a second bite at the cherry by offering a brownfield site at a later stage?

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Last weekend’s Sunday Times article (16 March 2014, p. 19) lists two East Devon bathing beaches amongst 45 in the UK at risk of permanent closure because of sewage contamination. They could be “stripped of their designation as bathing waters from 2015. Visitors would be warned by prominent signs that the water was unsafe to bathe in”, the Environment Agency’s head of bathing waters, Christine Tuckett, told the newspaper.
“About a third of the pollution comes from agriculture, a third from point sources like sewage works and the rest is down to random factors like misconnected drains,” said Tuckett.

So what could the pollution sources be at Budleigh Salterton and Ladram Bay? Here’s a look, first, at Ladram Bay, where the expanding caravan site would be hard hit if its customers couldn’t swim from the lovely beach it leads to.

We’ll ask local residents about the Budleigh pollution problem, for a follow-up post.

The Exmouth Journal has the story: http://www.exmouthjournal.co.uk/news/beach_hut_owners_angry_after_damage_1_3337226

Another bad decision by EDDC?

Some clues might be found in the following extract from a letter, dated 25 September 2009, to Mr John Wardle of the Devon Area Office of the Environment Agency. It was sent by Budleigh Salterton resident, David Daniel, and is headed ‘Data relevant to Flooding from the Sea – Budleigh Salterton’,and mentions that damage had occurred 7 times between 1970 & 2000.

‘Dear Mr Wardle
Thank you for letting me come over to meet you on Tuesday , to discuss flooding from the sea at Budleigh Salterton.
I have been collating the evidence of severely damaging storms and storm surges from records kept in the local Museum. These are mainly eyewitness accounts, newspaper cuttings and photographs. These are not a complete record of all storms only those of sufficient severity as to warrant special mention. From empirical evidence (which PPS25 seems to suggest should always be used where available), the part of the beach worst affected by storm driven flooding from the sea is the eastern section of approx 1.2 km, from the Longboat to the Otter Head, of the 4.5 km beach. I am of the opinion that the section of the beach subject to flood damage and the extent of this damage is not easily subject to predictive calculation. This is because it is a three dimensional hydrodynamic effect caused by wind, waves and the angle they hit the beach, but perhaps your experts can correct me.

From this I believe there were at least eight storms between 1951 and 2000 of sufficient severity to flood this section of the beach. Namely: mid 50’s; 1970 (Feb); 1974 (Jan or Feb); 1982; 1989 (16 Dec); 1990 (2 Feb); 1991(end March); and 2000 (Oct). (Approximately one every six years although in practice they are far from evenly spaced). The effects of global warming are predicted to increase the frequency and severity of these storm surges. This represents an annual flood risk of 16% which seems to me to be thirty times greater than the “high risk” threshold used as guidelines in PPS 25 for flooding from the sea. We seem to be in uncharted “exceptional risk” territory.

Budleigh Salterton beach is described as “naturally protected” by the pebbles washed out from the “Bunter Beds” and thrown onto an underlying sandy substructure. But this protection is dynamic. Living memory from my family relates that on occasion some severe storms scour the pebbles off the beach and then years later another storm will throw them back. This has meant in the past the temporary loss of paths and a threat to the protection of the Otter Estuary. So, following the 1970 storm, protective gabions were installed in 1972. Their height had to be increased in 1974. And they were extensively repaired again by EDDC in 1990 following the 1989 storm in which 150m of gabions were torn open directly in front of the Longboat House. These repairs were incomplete when further damage was sustained in February 1990.

The purpose of gabions is to contain erosion, although as you can see from the evidence, they are not invulnerable to the extraordinary power of the sea. They are not impervious and they do not stop water coming through them or over the top.

I enclose a selection of photographs to indicate the extent of erosion storms of this severity cause and strewn pebble “witness” of how high the water has carried them.

Yours sincerely,
David Daniel

Gabions installation, 1972

Storm 1974

Storm Dec 1989

The above letter will make uncomfortable reading for the owner of the Longboathouse cafe, as will reports in the national media of higher insurance premiums for properties, including small businesses, at risk of flooding.