Nothing sustainable about housing plans

HAVING sat through the Planning Inquiry regarding the 250-housing estate scheme to be built on top of 700 tons of buried asbestos adjacent to Devon’s Taw/Torridge Estuary, I would like to make a couple of observations. Firstly, the Planning Inspector deserves a special mention. He was brilliantly fair, balanced and made a point of putting everyone at ease and I was surprised at how much time he had set aside for ordinary residents like me to read out our speeches and make our points. It was much appreciated.

It was painfully obvious at the Inquiry that this application has no benefits for our local community, the economy or our environment. Indeed, our wildlife will be wiped out and residents will suffer 13 to 15 years of hell during the build time with air and noise pollution from heavy lorries; dust clouds in the summer/mud in the winter. Traffic congestion will increase. Our health and wellbeing will be seriously compromised. If this horrendous scheme is approved, it will set a precedent for the whole of our estuary coastline.

I am no planning expert but in my view there can be no case in planning terms that would make it right, just, democratic or sustainable for this magnificent estuary site to be wiped out. I have challenged Emery’s Statement of Case under: ‘Past, Present and Future’ whereby they state: “This appeal is the only deliverable way forward to provide a sustainable development and is an opportunity that the council should have welcomed rather than resisted.” I’m forced to conclude they have not understood the meaning of sustainable.

The most often quoted definition of this concept comes from the United Nations World Commission on Environment and states: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Sustainability presumes that resources are finite, and should be used conservatively and wisely with a view to long-term priorities and consequences of the way in which resources are used. In simplest terms, sustainability is about our children and our grandchildren, and the world we leave behind”.

Surely, Emery, the appellants and their architects would not argue with the United Nations – as well as our MP Selaine Saxby. She states in her email dated January 6, 2022: “I agree that it is not an environmentally appropriate development. It could not be considered sustainable.”

Then came the issue of “off-setting” which everyone seems confused about. In simple terms, to a layman like me, it means, for a sum of money, you can destroy nature on one site and merely transfer and attempt to re-create it on another site!

In my opinion, it’s utterly obscene. Our wildlife will be wiped out. It operates like the mediaeval system of Papal Indulgences, whereby rich sinners could buy absolution with a huge pile of cash.

Or a more up to date version is the example of the much-criticised Emma Thompson, who flew in her jet from America, some 5,400 miles, to show how ‘green’ she was when attending the Extinction Rebellion’s antics in London (causing 1.64 tonnes of CO2) and promised to ‘absolve’ herself by planting a tree when she flew back!

The whole concept is hypocritical, nonsensical and scandalous, like this planning application. It will be to the shame of us all if this obscenity were permitted to desecrate our wonderful and much loved estuary.

Joanne Bell Press Officer Save our Estuary Campaign Yelland, Devon