BURRATOR parish councillors last week voted to support South West Water's controversial plans for the reservoir — despite parishioners overwhelmingly rejecting them just minutes before.

The planning committee voted by four to three in favour but, at the request of Cllr Graham Palmer, the matter will go to the full council early next year.

SWW has applied to the Dartmoor National Park Authority to convert Burrator Lodge into a café and demolish an historic iron shed to make way for a 52-space car park to cater for the 1.2-million existing visitors.

Many people see it as a surreptitious move to commercialise the area — a plan rejected in 1996.

More than 150 Burrator parishioners turned out to tell councillors what they thought about SWW's scheme and, in a vote at the end of the meeting, 152 were against the plans with only six in favour.

The main concerns were SWW 'steamrollering' the planning process, without any regard to people's wishes, and anger that SWW had come back with a watered-down proposal just three years after a huge project to commercialise the area was thrown out following massive opposition.

Many people felt this proposal was the thin end of the wedge with more money-making plans to follow, possibly to take advantage of European money coming into the Devon-Plymouth Arc.

Most people were concerned at the effect on the fragile ecology, beauty and history of the area with the huge numbers of people and vehicles that would be attracted. And others about the effect on quality of life.

Planning chairman Elizabeth Hopson said the people in the meeting were voting against the previous plan put forward by the National Park.

'This was quite a different plan put by the water authority for the use of the lodge,' she said, adding that it bore no connection to the item people were commenting on.

'Half of them hadn't seen the plan, they just had this thing in their minds that it was the water authority. You have to divorce your mind from that.

'It was a good plan to use a building — not the thin end of any wedge. People love to hate the National Park and the water authority — neither are always right, but when they are right we have to acknowledge it.'

Mrs Hopson, Mike Dobson, Derek Lavers and Ted Whitehead voted in favour. Mr Palmer, Daphne Button and Jackie Moorhead voted against. Deborah McCann and Andy Gordon abstained.

Burrator Parish Council will discuss the issue in full council on January 13.

It will go before Dartmoor National Park Authority's planning committee on the first Friday in March.