The influential national conservation group, SAVE Britain’s Heritage, is dismissive of Pegasus Life’s response to their letter arguing against the demolition of the 19th century Knowle landmark building. As reported in the Sidmouth Herald (19 February 2016), Clementine Cecil of SAVE says, “Demolition is not a satisfactory way of dealing with a historic building, even an unlisted one. It is clearly a fine building that remains in use and popular. It deserves more than a tokenistic nod towards conservation in the form of keeping some tiles ,fireplaces and fragments of wallpaper. We will be objecting formally in the strongest possible terms to the planning application” .

Pegasus Life has reacted to concerns put by Michael Temple, a member of Save Our Sidmouth, that there had been some “false or ambiguous claims” in the developer’s revised plans for the site (reported on p. 12 of the Herald, 19 Feb 2016). The same edition of the newspaper quotes this statement from a Pegasus Life spokesperson: “Our consultation is ongoing and our plans are still changing to take into account comments received at our January consultation events, in advance of our planning application submission in March. As part of the application, detailed images will be submitted including verified views and site sections”.