Auditors examining how West Devon Borough Council came up with a controversial scheme to build a budget hotel on a Tavistock car park without consulting the community have recommended a number of measures before the council take on the role of ‘property developer’ again.

Auditor Dominic Measures told WDBC’s hub committee on Tuesday that the furore over the plans generated among residents and traders might have been avoided if the council had kept records of the meetings of the council’s Invest to Earn group which dreamed up the idea.

He said they should also have made more of an effort to inform the community before suddenly announcing the plan to build a hotel to lease to a budget hotel chain in January 21 this year, along with proposals to build a ‘hospitality pod’ in the place of public toilets in Martket Street in Okehampton. Both schemes, when they did become public, were fiercely opposed in both communities.

Read the full story in tomorrow’s edition of the Tavistock Times.