WHAT follows is an address I gave to Teignbridge District Council’s Planning Committee on Tuesday in advance of their decision on the proposed Lidl store in Bovey Tracey, writes retired consultant, Doctor David Halpin.

I am here for 10 minutes in my 83rd year because I care - about my fellow humans and indeed all ‘creation’. 

We are discussing the building of a ‘supermarket’ in AD 2023 right by the Challa Brook, and on the other side of the ‘ring road’. The ringing road is built on a causeway made by monks centuries ago.

Iron Age remnants were found in the marshy ground. When 12 hectares of land were very wrongly passed for housing, the DCC archeology unit was meant to have access to each bite of the diggers. I have not heard the results. 

I say ‘to care is the most important characteristic of any worthwhile society’. Sadly there is less caring, and it shows. But I hope for better – as today.

Here are my main reasons for objecting to this application, and I objected strongly to this housing. I was here speaking at ‘planning’ about four years ago. But a decision was made based on a chairman’s vote or similar. Clarity there was not.

1. It will, within a year or two, kill the businesses of Bovey Tracey stone dead. Already the excellent Arnold’s ironmongers has died but ugly concrete rendering behind what was the Arnolds’ sign is there to remind us. With a narrow street, charged and less convenient parking, discounting by Lidl’s etc, these businesses will struggle more.

These are the Co-op at the Mill, Spar, Tesco, the greengrocers selling local veg, the recently arrived bakers replacing Thomases, and the delicatessen. I add the Co-Op at Trago. And failure is infectious. I visited Arnolds most weeks and almost every time found very quickly what I wanted from Bob and his long standing and named staff.

So its fossil fuel to B&Q, another ‘corporate’, and instead of struggling to find a parking space, I will shop in Newton Abbot as we do most weeks now. Good eventually if others do the same, reversing the trend caused by the sucking out due to the out-of-town ‘super’ markets with their free parking.

And as impoverishment grows in line with food banks, most will shop for the essentials my family were well fed on during WW2 and the very lean years which followed. The International Store across the road from my Dad’s electronic business served just a few hundred groceries, instead of many thousands of mostly processed ‘foods’ – often junk like flavoured crisps at vast mark up.

Our very excellent and honoured Ilsington Community Shop will also be threatened. So yet more fossil fuel will be burned and ultimately there will be more expense for those with or without cars.  The ‘big shop’ at a ‘super’ market will be an answer, though perhaps the Butter Market on life support will live again.

2. I recall that Bovey Tracey Council ‘thought’ it could not object to Lidl’s on grounds of threatened viability.  But it could and should have. Many houses, some no doubt second homes now or ‘Air B&Bs’ were built on parcels of pasture owned by four local farmers, on the north flank of Moretonhampstead. I attended that crowded meeting at Parke. I remember the biased attitude of the chairman one Cann, and Councillor Whitley. This large man said he had received many letters and e-mails in opposition, but he took no notice of them! So the ‘re-vitalisation’ of this special moorland  settlement went ahead.

What is sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander. ‘Re-vitalisation’ was the central theme in the propaganda which crushed very widespread opposition then. So the ‘de-vitalising’ of Bovey Tracey can be the central theme now. 

3. This application goes against the neighbourhood plan. These plans happen with many citizens believing they are fait accomplis. But a plan is a plan and supposedly a democratic way forward against chaos. So why does Lidl’s have the brass neck to force the issue at the Challa Brook? It poses as the consumer friendly grocer – but hear later.

4. The highway. The ‘ring road’ was built to relief congestion in Bovey and limit intoxication by carbon monoxide, nitrites/sulphites and PM 10s. And to speed traffic past Bovey. So this application arrogantly seeks a reverse. And the trick of building a ring road and then ringing it with houses is now plain to see, and nationwide. Where will the entrance to this German owned emporium be? Will the pedestrian traffic lights be adapted to allow the punters, with very few on bikes, to be in and out?

5.The National Park. This proposed intrusion is but a quarter mile from that engraved stone showing the boundary of our precious National Park. The proposed ‘urbanisation’ is a violation of it.

6. The planning notices were placed on mesh screens inside the development and by the temporary road with lorries passing, and not alongside  Monk’s Way – say by the pedestrian traffic light. (Letter published in the Mid Devon Advertiser August 2022) This was unlawful.  A new application must happen.   

7. I end with the philosophical and actual. The global plan is for ‘corporatism’ against the local, the communities in our wonderful world and the innately human. That is, speaking to a lady or man you know rather than a glum person clicking the bar codes. In my happily rare visits to the ‘super’ I always address the check out operative by name.

The face lights up – though one at Sainsbury’s is stone deaf and lip reads. I add the vast lorries trundling from vast packing sheds and warehouses in central locations  Lidl’s already has 900 stores in the UK. Read this quote from its website – and found with difficulty -

As part of the Schwarz retail group, Lidl is one of Europe’s leading organisations in the food retail industry. The supermarket, which has more than 341,000 employees globally, currently operates approximately 11,550 stores and more than 200 warehouses and distribution centres in 30 countries.

Dear councillors on this Teignbridge District Council planning committee – vote in memory of Arnolds and for continued business life in Bovey Tracey. The Gadarene rush to Mammon’s abyss must be headed off.