Residents and politicians are being urged to get behind a call to boost its planning defences against an ‘unsustainable’ demand for new homes.

Planning officers and councillors are facing pressure from developers to build new homes on sites previously ‘out of bounds’ as the government pushes for a big increase in new builds.

There are fears among residents the majority of the 1,500 homes that developers want to build in Tavistock will be granted planning permission, leading to traffic congestion and to overwhelming of health, education and other services.

In a renewed campaign, Tavistock Town Council agreed at its last full meeting to change the new Tavistock Neighbourhood Plan to act as a more effective bulwark against new estates, especially in the countryside and at the edge of town.

Town councillor Cllr Graham Parker, speaking after the meeting and giving his own views as a retired town planner, said: “The urgent review of the neighbourhood plan to formally recognise a settlement boundary for the town. This makes it clearer for developers and planners the criteria for considering where and what type of homes should be built when there’s unprecedented pressure from developers under new more relaxed planning rules.

“Residents’ main complaints about the near 1,500 homes suggested for Tavistock are that the infrastructure is inadequate to support extra traffic and demand for schools and GPs.

“This lack of sufficient services isn’t recognised by the NHS or the education authority, but the people that live here know how difficult it is to see a GP or how schools are crowded.

“Then there’s the pre-Victorian road system with pinch-points which can’t cope with the slightest hold-up of traffic and there’s no way the roads can be improved on key accesses because they’re within the World Heritage site, which has planning protection.”

Tavistock Town Council planning committee has agreed an ‘urgent’ review of the neighbourhood plan because the existing local plan, overseen by West Devon Borough Council (WDBC), as the planning authority, is not providing the protection against over-development it might have done in the past.

A bolstered neighbourhood plan should also cover the criteria and constraints for the location of development, the need for infrastructure and confirming site allocations for 600 new homes and business sites already in the pipeline.

Cllr Parker said the West Devon Joint Local Plan was now out of date and needed updating, but would take at least three years to replace to meet West Devon residents’ needs.

The plan could not demonstrate a five-year land supply for new housing, which WDBC planning officers say renders it invalid and ineffective in terms of resisting planning applications.

However, Cllr Parker says the local plan does still operate and there is national support for local needs. He points out that under the local plan, estates planned for rural areas and edge of town sites should include a maximum of 40 per cent market value homes (so-called ‘exception sites’. This leaves room for more affordable homes and those for local people.

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