AN independent review will be undertaken into developmental decisions by West Devon Borough Councillors concerning the recent hotel proposal for Tavistock.

A scheme for the borough council to borrow millions of pounds to build a hotel on Abbey Rise car park and lease it to a major hotel chain had been approved in principle by a senior council officer under delegated authority from a small group of councillors. However, following public outcry against the proposals, a meeting of the full council saw the plans unanimously thrown out.

Several borough councillors requested scrutiny into the process of how the borough council had come to make a proposal to the full council for the project, without some ward councillors having known anything about the plans.

Cllr Graham Parker said: ‘Along with half a dozen other councillors, I have submitted a request for scrutiny of how the hotel proposal was brought forward and who was consulted; what evidence was used to justify the claims about car parking and the impact on existing B&Bs and the World Heritage Site.

‘We aren’t interested in starting a witch hunt. Scrutiny is about finding out what happened and learning from it. It isn’t about finger pointing. That’s for other people and other times, after we’ve established the facts.’

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