A BLUEPRINT for development across the Greater Exeter region, that includes Newton Abbot and other parts of Teignbridge, has been thrown into doubt after East Devon councillors recommended pulling out of the process.

The aim of the Greater Exeter Strategic Plan (GESP) was to provide the overall spatial strategy and level of housing and employment land required across Exeter, Teignbridge East Devon and Mid Devon in the period to 2040.

But while Exeter and Teignbridge councils had recommended going out to consultation on the draft policies and site options document, East Devon District Council’s Strategic Planning Committee after more than four hours of debate on Thursday night proposed instead pulling out of GESP.

As the initial decision to take part in GESP was a full council decision, the recommendation stands referred to full council to make the final decision.

Putting forward her call to pull out of GESP, Cllr Eleanor Rylance said that the plan was not fit to be consulted on now or at any point, describing it as a ’monstrosity of a dead camel’.

After four hours of debate, councillors rejected Cllr Howe’s proposals to adjourn the meeting and then reconvene to go through the wording of the policies one-by-one by nine votes to four, before voting by eight votes to four, with one abstention, to Cllr Rylance’s proposal to withdraw from GESP.

Despite her protestations, the council’s chief executive Mark Williams said that it had to be a recommendation to full council, rather than a decision from the committee, as it was a full council decision to join GESP in the first place. The next full council meeting scheduled to take place is in October.

The GESP document did outline policies for how development should take place, as well as 39 sites where major housing or employment land could be allocated, although not all of the sites would have been taken forward to the final version of the GESP.