I HOPE I can offer Mr Barclay (Letters July 27) some reassurance. He has been sent a copy of the consultation draft of the Planning Brief for the Abbey Garage site and he has until August 4 to respond formally to the council's planning department.
The consultation draft refers clearly to policy TT1 twice and the covering report to committee drew councillors' attention to it again.
As regards Mr Barclay's reference to the Head of Planning and Development (P&D) he was responding to a specific question by your reporter about the emerging draft of the new Local Plan. This will go on deposit on September 11, whereafter everyone will have an opportunity to make comments and raise objections.
Several responses have already been made to the consultation draft of the Planning Brief for the Abbey Garage site and all of them so far have highlighted the issue of Dolvin Road residents' parking. Those representations will be reported to the planning committee on August 29 and I have no doubt that Tavistock's councillors will be anxious to respond positively to them.
The difficulty facing the Head of P&D in preparing the brief was that, in purely land use terms (which is what a Planning Brief is actually about), the Dolvin Road parking issue is only peripherally relevant and is in any case not the remit of the planning committee. Responsibility for the Dolvin Road commitment is that of a different committee, namely the strategic development committee. Somehow the planning committee will have to reconcile these issues.
Wearing my two hats, one as a borough councillor for Tavistock and the other as chairman of the planning committee, I shall be as anxious as anyone to see that the issues are reconciled satisfactorily. My record on the Dolvin Road issue is well known.
Cllr R W Mathew
Chairman of
planning committee
West Devon Borough Council