East Devon village issues plea for rethink over development plan

Feniton residents want East Devon District Council to reassess its development ideas after the village was allocated up to 102 new homes. The proposal is part of work to prepare a new local plan, which identifies places where development is acceptable.

An East Devon village is urging a rethink over the potential number of homes that could be built there.
Feniton residents want East Devon District Council to reassess its development ideas after the village was allocated up to 102 new homes.
The proposal is part of work to prepare a new local plan, which identifies places where development is acceptable.
The plan, which stretches to 2042, also suggests a maximum capacity for sites, but an allocation does not dictate the number of homes that will be built at each location. And unless a planning application is submitted by a developer for the site, no homes would be built.
Martin Smith, a Feniton parish councillor, highlighted what he called “inconsistencies” with East Devon’s emerging local plan.
He claimed the vision for the local plan stated rural development would be “modest, sensitively planned development to meet the needs of local communities”, but that official policy wording made no reference to local need.
“This is clearly a device to overcome the fact that for some tier 4 settlements [meaning small rural villages such as Feniton] you have proposed within the plan more housing than is necessary to meet local need,” he said at the district council’s strategic planning meeting this week.
“The vision and the policy are now different and neither is being applied consistently.” 
He also queried 4.6 hectares of land in Feniton identified as suitable for employment sites, saying such scale far exceeded allocations in other similar villages and was even larger than the amount set aside in Exmouth for general industry, and storage and distribution activities.
Another resident, Barbara Whetter, alerted councillors to her walking stick, which she said she now needed because of a “terrible experience with traffic” in Feniton.
“Why is the proposed development for Feniton bigger than every other village of a relevant size,” she said.
“Our village is car-dependent as we only have a rural bus service that runs every two hours but if there is flooding, or ice, then we are cut off and the bus to Honiton only goes twice a week.”
She added that the roads in the village were “not fit for today’s traffic” and that large numbers of extra vehicles would cause problems.
Feniton is known to flood, with 60 properties flooded in 2008, according to the district council. In October, the council started the final phase of a £6 million flood alleviation scheme for the village, which is expected to take a year to complete.
The committee was considering whether to approve a draft of the local plan, but was not revisiting decisions it had made on specific sites.
The council is trying to finish its draft plan so that its housing target is not increased further.
Ed Freeman, assistant director for planning strategy and development management, said if the plan was not ready in time, then East Devon could have to build around 200 more homes a year than under current guidelines.
As it stands, the draft local plan proposes 22,536 new homes across the district over the plan’s 20-year life, which includes an extra 10 per cent buffer beyond its requirement, something which councils are being recommended to do.
A public consultation is expected to take place in January.