Jenny Ridd, of Southdowns Road, Dawlish, writes

Re "Housing workshop a sham" (Post 22.6.12), it seems that Teignbridge District Council just doesn't learn from its mistakes. The same criticisms made of the Seal-Hayne workshop were also true of the whole Dawlish debacle.

Once again numbers of houses needed had not been

agreed, plus residents' concerns over additional A379 traffic, sewage and employment were ignored in the Inspector's report.

And yet another greenfield site is set to be lost. Southdowns Road, a proposed site south of Dawlish, has two designations, a well-used public footpath, is a buffer zone between it and Holcombe, and is the

habitat of the red-listed rare cirl bunting, yet TDC did not deem it necessary to have an Environmental Assessment done.

At the farcical Dawlish Examination residents heard how "incentives" had been offered by landowners and developers, so that the Southdowns field can now be undesignated, a unsuitably hilly field offered to

walkers instead, tree-planting could replace the buffer zone, and the RSPB could move the cirl buntings under a project paid for by the developers. Shocked residents quickly realised that with these mitigations, they were witnessing a "done deal". In fact, at the

Examination, the Southdowns site was described as "oven ready".

Despite all those conditions which residents thought would protect a greenfield site, they were just swept away for nothing more than financial gain. Soon the green fields which attract tourists to our

area will have disappeared, and the Council will have killed its own golden goose.

When the Inspector's report found in favour of TDC and the developers on the majority of issues, residents knew that they were dealing with a pre-determined outcome. Hopefully this will be a warning to other

local people who are going through this. I bellieve that the the Inspector was employed by, and paid by, Teignbridge District Council, despite being termed

independent. In his report he states, "... the [Dawlish] Steering Group has sought to assess the level of housing which would be "acceptable" to the local community rather than what is needed". With

an agenda like that, why bother with consultation?

J