My comments to councillors about the Green Wedge site

Posted on February 16, 2025

I’ve written to councillors on the Planning Committee as follows:

Dear members of the Planning Committee,

I am unable to attend your meeting, but as Seaton’s former county councillor and having chaired a meeting of 150 residents on this issue in 2023, I wish to remind you of the strongly held objections of many residents to this scheme. As the report notes, the proposal conflicts with key policies of the local plan (development outside the BUAB, eroding the Green Wedge) and would have harmful landscape effects – these include on the environment near the Wetlands, the centre of EDDC’s tourist strategy for Seaton. 

In addition, the site is not a genuinely sustainable location from a travel point of view, Colyford Road is not suitable for a large addition of traffic, and Seaton’s facilities are under severe strain from the substantial growth in population over the last few years which has not been matched by improved health or educational facilities – on the contrary, there have been sustained attempts to close parts of our hospital which have still not been resolved.

The report notes the real shortage of affordable housing, but Seaton has much experience of the unreliability of this kind of offer in outline applications. In 2013, the Tesco site was supposed to have 40 per cent affordable housing, then 25 per cent, before it became zero. Twelve years later, I don’t think EDDC has even received an overage payment from that huge project. The housing Seaton needs is not yet another large development made up mainly of retirement homes, but a specific proposal for actual social housing.

Previous applications of this kind for the same site have previously been rejected, including by an inspector, for many of the above reasons, as some members of the Committee will recall from their own roles in opposing them. I appreciate the difficult situation the Council has been put in, but I ask you not to approve this development.

Regards,

Martin Shaw

Local Plan – last chance to comment before it goes to Inspector

Posted on February 13, 2025

Local Plan Regulation 19 consultation – Thursday 13 February
— Read on content.govdelivery.com/accounts/UKEDDC/bulletins/3cd0c37