Challenge to East Devon development plan fails

Some smaller villages in East Devon that want to more inclusion in East Devon’s local plan have been spurned. Both Upottery and Woodbury Salterton claimed they should be designated as villages where more houses could be built.

Some smaller villages in East Devon that want more inclusion in East Devon’s local plan have been spurned.
Both Upottery and Woodbury Salterton claimed they should be designated as villages where more houses could be built.
East Devon District Council’s strategic planning committee has spent recent months deciding where new homes should be located between now and 2040.
Neither of the two villages were considered eligible to be in the new local plan, which the council is trying to complete before the end of the year.
The rush to finish it is being fuelled by a significant factor; if it completes the task in time, it will be required to build 946 homes per year, but if it doesn’t meet that deadline it may have to build 1,146 homes per year, an extra 200 annually.
Ken Perry, a Woodbury Salterton resident who read a statement on behalf of its parish council, said it wanted to “correct” how the village should be catagorised.
“East Devon’s report says that Woodbury Salterton has no shop, but that is incorrect,” he said.
“Greendale Farm Shop is just 1.2 kilometres from the centre of the village as the crow flies, and it has various things including a shop, butcher, bakery, fishmonger, deli and more, something that would be the envy of many other sustainable communities.”
“Also, the report says Woodbury Salterton lacks facilities like sports playing pitches and things such as allotments, but that’s incorrect as the parish council owns an allotment site in the centre of the village.”
Mr Perry added that Woodbury Salterton had a pub and school that are “both experiencing long-term viability issues”.
But Ed Freeman, assistant director of planning, strategy and development at East Devon District Council, said the committee agreed in 2021 the criteria that led to communities being designated for inclusion in the local plan, and that a subsequent meeting in February 2022 confirmed the decision not to include such villages.
“We purposefully took the committee through the process of agreeing the hierarchy of settlements as it underpins the work we have been doing to focus development on sustainable settlements,” he said.
“It would pose many challenges to revisit this now.”
Mr Freeman added that while Upottery and Woodbury Salterton might have some services, such as shops or schools, these are often within the wider parish, rather than being easily accessible from village centres.
“That’s why the likes of Clyst St George has also not been allocated in the local plan, because while Dart’s Farm is within the parish, it is not safely and easily accessible in terms of walking,” he added.
Furthermore, Mr Freeman noted that exclusion from the East Devon local plan did not mean those villages couldn’t create their own local plans, which could express their desires for where they wanted development to occur within their communities.
Cllr Geoff Jung (Liberal Democrat, Woodbury and Lympstone) agreed that to change and review sites for inclusion in the local plan now would “take some time and I don’t think it would be acceptable”.
Cllr Ben Ingham (Conservative, Woodbury and Lympstone) argued whether the council was “that inflexible” and queried why the decision to exclude Upottery and Woodbury Salterton couldn’t be reviewed.
But Mr Freeman noted that including those two villages would likely mean the inclusion of others, and could lead to the other tiers it had identified – which denote where more houses could be built – being questioned.
“The danger is you start going round in circles,” he added.