TENSIONS ran high at a meeting between West Devon Borough Council representatives and Tavistock’s business community to discuss the proposed hotel on the Abbey Rise Car Park site, held last night (Monday).

The Tavistock and District Chamber of Commerce organised the meeting at The Bedford Hotel to offer business owners in the area the chance to ask questions of West Devon Borough Council representatives and share their views on the proposed 80 bedroom hotel, which would be built by the borough council and run by a major UK operator on the car park site.

At the meeting it was revealed that the building would stand five storeys tall at its highest point, almost the exact same height as neighbouring Godolphin House, with the building cut into the ground — though as of yet there are no drawings or plans to show more exact details.

The multi-million pound investment is part of a commercial strategy designed to help the borough council close its budget gap, which is predicted to be around £1.1-million by 2021 following the removal of funding from central government.

Leader of the council, Cllr Philip Sanders, said: ‘We have invested in an office block in Bristol, and now blocks in Okehampton and Exeter. We have received huge criticism telling us we should invest in West Devon and in Tavistock.

‘There is very little commercially in West Devon to give us the yield we need. If this goes ahead, the yield is around 1% of our council tax initially, but people have been critical of us for investing outside the borough, so we are responding to that. It is not to our advantage to do this deal financially compared to others across the country.’

Lisa Buckle, head of finance and auditing at West Devon Borough Council, said: ‘We need to find ways to meet the deficit. If we’ve got a gap, we can’t borrow money for day to day running of the council. We can for capital investment.’

Business owners raised their concerns over the lost of 56 parking spaces — nine per cent of the town’s total — and the impact on the area’s existing hoteliers and bed and breakfast outlets. Council representatives stated that figures suggest the current car parks can cope if Abbey Rise Car Park were lost and they did not believe the budget accommodation would offer ‘direct competition’ to existing hotels and B&Bs.

Janna Sanders, manager of Tavistock BID, said: ‘The Riverside Car Park isn’t always empty as people seem to think. The data on our car parking levels is largely irrelevant — it’s about perception. We already have a bad reputation as a town for visitors when it comes to parking. If people think they can’t park, they don’t come. That is the crux of the problem.’

Kevin Hailey of Abode Property Agents said: ‘We are about to have 1,000 new homes built in the town. Have you done your due diligence to remove 56 spaces?

‘The council has given permission for the houses, but our infrastructure can’t cope and now parking spaces are being taken away. You gave permission for those houses, is the infrastructure really there? My staff, who have parking permits that we pay for, often can’t park either at the Riverside or Abbey Rise car parks. This is only going to make things an awful lot worse.

‘The borough council is supposed to be here to do things to fix our town, not break it.’

• Read the full article in Thursday’s edition of the Times.

• At the time of writing, more than 800 people have signed a petition fighting the construction of the hotel.

The petition was launched by Andrew Coulson. On the petition site, Mr Coulson said: ‘We feel that a decision has been made without due regard to the thoughts and wishes of the people whose town this is.

’We feel that as 5 of the 7 WDBC Tavistock Ward members were not informed of this decision and that it was not announced or divulged until afterwards it therefore represents a cynical use of council procedure to subvert democracy.’