Jim Wormald, of Castlewood Avenue, Newton Abbot, writes:

The undisguised schadenfreude of Tory council leader Jeremy Christophers following the decision of the High Court against Local Plan objectors, as yet unexplained, was as predictable as it was inappropriate.

He inferred that any objection to the plan should be regarded as costly, irritating nimbyism – a well-used word of our current, autocratic government from the Housing Minister downwards.

There followed the usual shibboleths extolling the 'aspirational presumptions' of this plan without reference to factual detail. A clear fact is that some 5,500 houses, of disputable eco-quality, are proposed, and well under way, on the remaining open spaces within, and adjacent to, the boundaries of the new 'parish' of Newton Abbot.

This is equivalent to a 'new town' being dumped on the existing infrastructure of our former town with no new initial provision. Queries to DCC Transport Department concerning detail and timing of planned, vital new road infrastructure, are now met with a standard reply that 'new infrastructure will be funded from the CIL charges payable by the housing developers as they become available' – five, ten, 20 years?

 Compare the planning and funding of 'new towns' such as Cranbrook (Exeter) and Bicester (Oxfordshire) with the TDC Local Plan which, by comparison, seems cheapskate.

Perhaps Cllr Christophers should reconsider, democratically, whether his majority of 449 voters from the rural electorate of pocket-sized Haytor ward – significantly less than the number of objectors to the Local Plan! – is sufficient mandate to lead its imposition and thereby seriously degrade the future environmental quality of life of many of its residents – human and wildlife?

 Austerity will be the solution to our debt-ridden economy, we are told by the Chancellor.

There must be fairer ways of sharing this burden across the populace than by downgrading selective, established communities?

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