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The Bradworthy Wind Turbines
Councillor
Christie's Weblog
From your Torridge District Councillor Peter Christie
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26th July '09
The town council planning committee looked at an application last week concerning the development of six retail units alongside Clovelly Road just past the Co-op. The site had been earmarked for a garden centre but this fell through hence this new scheme. No retailers are named in the application but the number of new jobs is estimated at around 50. The committee unanimously supported the plans although, on my suggestion, we did add a rider asking that a ‘Section 106’ be applied asking that the developers make funds available to widen the road to the Abbotsham Cross roundabout. This would allow the authorities to then direct all heavy vehicles via this route and close Old Town/Meddon Street to them – except for emergency and services of course. The scheme, with our recommendations, will now go on to Torridge and we will see what happens.
I hear that the applicant behind the proposed large development at Raleigh of a care home/84 units for ‘independent living’ village is going to appeal against the planning refusal handed down by Torridge. The rejection was based on the traffic bottleneck at the bottom of Rydon Hill by the Rydon Garage and also the very limited access by Lenwood. In addition the new development would be in open countryside and councillors found this unacceptable. The appeal will be interesting and could well be complicated by the rumoured new developments at Lenwood which might possibly lead to even more traffic being generated at this spot if they are given the go-ahead. Although it sometimes seems that this part of North Devon rarely changes in truth it always seems to be in a state of flux – and somehow the council have to ensure that new developments are for the benefit of the whole community rather than just a narrow group of developers or an opposition faction.
Last year Torridge handed over its council houses to the Tarka Housing Association on the basis that the council couldn’t afford all the property modernisation necessary whereas Tarka, who could borrow money more easily, could do this. Various ‘promises’ were made both to the council and to the tenants – so it was fascinating to get a report on the first year’s work at last week’s Policy committee meeting. Some 61 ‘Performance Indicators’ were measured and, as councillor James Morrish pointed out, of these 36 were below target, 17 on course and 8 ‘close to target’. As he quite rightly said, if these were the council’s results we would be taken to task by the government for poor performance. He concluded by saying that so many missed targets ‘doesn’t give me much hope for the future.’ Following this sombre overview I asked about the 5 families evicted during the year – where did they actually go? Apparently they become Torridge’s responsibility and we put them in emergency housing – though this is only for 28 days if they have made themselves ‘intentionally homeless’ i.e. not paid the rent, been anti-social etc. Where they go after these 4 weeks was left unstated.
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