MR Sergeant (Letters, April 22) does his cause no good service by deploying emotive phrases like 'Crowndale ghetto' to bolster a thin case against the wider principle of concentrated versus dispersed development.
I have more sympathy with his contention that offering a choice of options might have revealed a different balance of opinion (though in this case I rather doubt it), but this is a disingenuous argument: practical reality is that evolving one credible plan at the required level of detail is complex enough; to produce two or more is plainly disproportionately costly in both time and money.
Where I agree with Mr Sergeant is that new road capacity is absolutely indispensable. The capacity of the Plymouth Road is already outrageously overloaded. Moreover, the Ford Street roundabout already carries the heaviest loading of any in Tavistock. The notion, beloved of the county council, that 'demand management' can substitute for new capacity is quite potty.
The borough council had no business giving in to pressure from county to downgrade the new road from 'essential' to 'desirable'.
Unfortunately, Tavistock has only one county councillor; and another 750 houses will not change that.
What needs to change is county's stubborn refusal to accept that walking and cycling cannot meet the transport needs of an increasingly geriatric population, inhabiting geography with a large vertical component.
I look forward to hearing a lot of noise from our county councillor, urging her fellow councillors in Exeter to readopt the principle of 'predict and provide' in relation to road capacity in Tavistock.
Roger W Mathew
Down Road
Tavistock
WEST Devon Borough Council succeeded, at the decisive meeting last Monday week, in getting their plans for the huge housing estate passed. Regrettably it was achieved by questionable means. Presentation of facts for a start — the committee were told the estate is to be for 750 houses, when in fact this is only a minimum and the local development framework figure is 1,500; that the planned road across the valley has been put on the back burner, when in fact it is still part of the plan; that only 176 objections had been registered, when in fact there were well over 1,000 objections at the parish poll alone. A councillor tried to have this acknowledged, but it was disallowed by the chair — a quite unreasonable and rather contemptuous dismissal of a perfectly valid point.
We are no longer to live in a market town. Presumably to reduce the wealth of historical association that goes with such a title, the heritage that creates its significance, and the related emotive value, Tavistock is no longer to be known as a market town.
The officers of the council responsible, presumably see the title as an inconvenient psychological obstruction to their master plan. The value of the adjacent Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and World Heritage Status are a nuisance and must be distanced emotively. The significance of the beauty of the landscape there can be ignored, dismissed, even. So we are to have urban sprawl in an offically recognised beautiful area.
Furthermore it is to be made as easy as possible for any developer to impose this desecration, even though great play was originally made (at an earlier stage of the process) to protect the countryside and enhance our heritage. Weasel wording changes in the text of the document now loosens requirements.
Tavistock from now on is to be no more than another mediocre variation of suburbia.
Jeremy Davies