FEARS that small communities will die and Tavistock and Okehampton will become 'unwieldy urban sprawls' were expressed at a heated public meeting on Friday night about the development blueprint for West Devon.

Around 60 people at a meeting in Okehampton's Ockment Centre shared their concerns about the amount of housing planned for the two towns, which will amount to 1,650 over the next 16 years.

There have been calls to scrap the controversial core strategy since the Government announced that housing targets can now be set by local authorities and not at Westminster.

But West Devon Borough Council, which approved its core strategy on April 19, has remained adamant that it is the right one for West Devon and sent the document for Government examination a week ago.

Robert Flexman at the meeting described the housing figures for villages as 'pathetic'.

'The answer is to make small communities more sustainable instead of creating an unwieldy urban sprawl in Tavistock and Okehampton,' he said.

Chief executive of the borough council David Incoll said villages were very small in West Devon.

'It's not just the effect on the sewerage and water capacity, if we propose housing in any village there is the same reaction as there is tonight. Only one village came forward and said it wanted it.

'In Lydford we tried to get affordable housing near the school but it was exactly the same. Everybody wants affordable housing but they do not want it near them.'

He said 26% of new housing in the borough up to 2026 would be built in the villages.

The meeting was told that primarily there was a market for bigger houses in West Devon and the council wanted smaller houses — flats, two and three bedroomed homes — so people could get on the housing ladder.

But Okehampton resident Teresa Bishop said: 'We do not want all these extra houses. We are not going to get the infrastructure for the 500 being built.

'There is no new primary school, no extra roads, there is not the employment. Who is going to buy these houses? There are enough retirees like me. We need younger people.'

The core strategy sets out a development brief which includes 900 houses in Okehampton and 750 in Tavistock. In Okehampton a new primary school is planned to be delivered alongside the housing and improvements to roads and services.

In Tavistock a new hospital, extension to the primary school and reinstatement of the railway line is planned, but it is not clear when each one will happen.

Alex Mettler from Tavistock said everyone was largely in agreement that there had to be a core strategy but the one presented was being rushed through and had 'more holes than a spider's web'.

He said virtually no figures had been mentioned and many of the infrastructure proposals were medium to high risk proposals. There was not even a link road to take all the traffic from the new development away from the town centre.

'There will be traffic chaos in Tavistock without that joined road. I do not know how the borough can make statements when there is no data there.'

The council's head of housing and strategic planning Marion Playle said more than 95% of affordable homes built in West Devon went to people who lived and worked in the borough. But there was no longer any residency criteria and you did not need to live in the area for 12 months to be accepted.

Mrs Playle said the aim was to get a more balanced population and that meant keeping young people in the borough. Devon already had the fastest number of over 85s for any county in the country.

The meeting was told that people from outside the area found it easy to buy houses in West Devon but the gap between house prices and what local people earned was increasing.

Mrs Playle said: 'We see the evidence of housing needs on a day to day basis. There are hundreds and hundreds of people on the housing register.'

Mr Incoll said the Government had informed the council to continue with its core strategy, reflecting the views of local people.

The cost of revoking it would mean the council relying on the old local plan and it became less dependable, especially when fighting appeals and keeping out large out of town supermarkets who were keen to build in Tavistock.

He said it was not the end product, it would be the planning inspector who wrote the final chapter: 'We have to satisfy the inspector that the infrastructure is in proportion to the development.'