IF I understood the mood correctly at the annual town meeting on Monday, May 18, it was that the core strategy as recently approved is decidedly unpopular.
Here are just some of the issues upon which it is thought to fail:
l The excessive and unjustified number of houses proposed for the town. This especially in the light of Devon County Council's 'Tavistock Population Projections document July 2007' which states: 'Overall the population of the Tavistock area is predicted to increase by 726 people between 2006 and 2021 — a rise of 2.5%' In other words it is planned to provide one new house per person
l Unconvincing explanation given against spreading the allocation of new houses among surrounding villages
l Failure to recognise the destructive effect a new road across the Tavy Valley will have — to the environment, the World Heritage Site of the Tavistock Canal and Drake's birthplace, the farms in the valley adjacent to the AONB, the community of Brook, to Brook Lane itself as a part of Tavistock's heritage (namely the ancient route between Tavistock and Buckland Abbeys) and a popular walking, riding and cycling route, not to mention the 'sustainable transport corridor's' inevitable resulting use as a by-pass, running straight into the proposed new housing/primary school/hospital/recreation area from two 'A' roads
l Inability to provide any guarantee that a railway provider will build the proposed railway once it has made profit from building and selling the houses.
It seems to me that the core strategy has not been thought through properly and should have been returned for revision.
Jeremy Davies Tavistock