View from Feniton-“a village ill-served by Cllr Graham Brown”

The Exeter Daily today received this statement from Dr John Withrington, Chair of Fight for Feniton’s Future.

Feniton is a small rural village in the East Devon Countryside. Under the EDDC draft Local Plan it was allocated 35 houses as its contribution to additional housing in the run up to 2026, and this seems to us fair. The fact that the Local Plan has not been finalised, that EDDC has been found to be persistently failing to meet its appropriate housing land supply, and the implementation of the National Policy Planning Framework on 27 March has made for a perfect storm for Feniton. Rather than 35 houses, the community is facing the construction of almost 300 houses on three separate sites in the open countryside. That’s an increase in the size of the village of 40%. This is clearly inappropriate and unsustainable. EDDC to date has refused to state what level of development would be ‘appropriate’ for our community.

While the community has been against inappropriate development in Feniton, and while the Parish Council has been unanimous in its opposition, the village has been ill served by Cllr Graham Brown, the councillor for Feniton and Buckerell. Cllr Brown has consistently failed to support the community on this front, both in public meetings and at meetings of EDDC. In fact Cllr Brown has been openly pro development, and has argued consistently for development in our village. Accordingly Feniton has been fighting not just rapacious developers, but the very councillor who is supposed to reflect our views and fight our corner. It is particularly alarming, as EDDC itself has volunteered, that Feniton seems to have been ‘targetted’ by developers. It is no doubt coincidence that the village targetted in this way happens to be the village represented by Cllr Brown.

The right and proper thing to do is for Cllr Brown to resign with immediate effect, and for EDDC to put on hold immediately any applications for mass housing development in Feniton.