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Category Archives: Knowle Watch


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TONIGHT! Town Council considers latest amendments to Knowle plans. 6.30pm, Sidford Social Hall.

Public are welcome to the Sidmouth Town Council meeting at 6.30pm, Sidford Social Hall this evening, (Weds 16 November), where a strong debate about Knowle plans, and penetrating comments at Public Speaking time, are predicted.
The Town Council planning committee will be considering revised drainage and bat mitigation reports together with amendments to the design and footprint of building E and the associated landscaping at the Knowle.

As consultees,the Town Council will send its conclusions to EDDC (the planning authority) for consideration on December 6th, when the Development Management Committee (DMC) will make the final decision.

Public comments are overwhelmingly against the Pegasus Life Planning Application, ref. 16/0872/MFUL.
Objections are based on a long list of planning considerations. A sample is given here:

‘There are several reasons for rejecting the above application:
1 Local Needs – Assisted living homes fail to address balanced community as per Local Plan.
2 Overdevelopment – The Pegasus proposal far exceeds the 50 homes in the Local Plan.
3 Imposing Bulk – excessive volumes and heights tower over parkland and neighbouring houses.
4 Impact on Knowle Park – the outstanding vistas and terraced landscape will be eradicated.
5 English Heritage (EH) Listed Building – the setting and space around the monument will be totally destroyed.’

See also our recent posts; the Knowle archives here and on the futuresforumvgs blogspot; and of course the planning portal on the eddc website.


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Overdevelopment of Knowle could cause problems for town’s drains

Pegasus Life’s latest batch of amendments to their planning application, has provoked the following letter, sent to the local press:

‘Sir
Residents and businesses downhill from the Knowle should be alerted to one of the 28 documents that PegasusLife has added to their planning application for the Knowle site. The letter that heads their 215 page ‘On Site Attenuation Report’ (document 2464318 on the EDDC Planning pages) discusses arrangements to deal with potential flash floods in episodes of heavy rain. With heavy rain incidents likely to increase in number and intensity in the coming years, it becomes more likely that the lower parts of town are at risk of flash floods as the town centre drains are overwhelmed. This could be made worse by the over-development of the Knowle. In their original application PegasusLife planned to reduce the amount of rainwater going into the town’s drains by diverting excess water into soakaways. However, their latest ground survey has shown that the types of soil and their distribution means this is ‘not technically feasible’. An alternative solution was to install attenuation tanks (basically large holding tanks that drain slowly) near the existing car park and under the EDDC depot at the SW corner of the site. It turns out that these tanks would have to be so large to cope with predicted flows they would be difficult and expensive to build. PegasusLife make it clear in their letter they do not want to deal with this problem, partly because “it is not viable in terms of cost for the project”. Bearing in mind the huge profit the company stands to make by trying to cram more than one hundred apartments onto the site and trying to avoid contributing anything to affordable housing in the town by claiming their apartment blocks are care homes, this does not wash. Let us hope that EDDC is not so desperate to complete the sale that they let PegasusLife get away with this.
Ed Dolphin, Sidmouth ‘

REMINDER: Deadline for your comments on the 28 latest documents, is this FRIDAY 11th NOVEMBER. See our previous post for details.


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‘EDDC is ordered to make Knowle information public’, Sidmouth Herald reports

From today’s Sidmouth Herald:

‘A transparency regulator has given district chiefs one month to reveal details they have tried to keep private on their move away from Sidmouth.
Campaigner Jeremy Woodward submitted Freedom of Information (FoI) requests to East Devon District Council (EDDC) about the decision to sell the site of its Knowle HQ to PegasusLife. When the authority refused to release some documents, he appealed to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
The ICO has now ruled that the authority should release ‘full, unredacted’ details of the agreement it entered into with the developer, the price it is prepared to pay,as well as minutes of meetings and correspondence on the decision to award the contract.
Back in 2014, EDDC was ordered to reveal the details of documents it preferred to keep secret – but instead chose to contest the ICO ruling. It lost at a tribunal and was ordered to release a tranche of key documents on its relocation project.
Mr Woodward, whose FoI request led to the 2014 battle, said: “The question now is whether the council will again contest the ICO’s ruling.
“This goes to the heart of how the council operates.
“As the ICO says in its ruling, this is very much an issue of transparency.” The ICO ruled that EDDC should release the conditional price PegasusLife is prepared to pay for Knowle, but not details of the build cost for the authority’s new HQ at Honiton, as this could affect its ability to negotiate with contractors.
It said the case is about the council‘spending public money on its own facilities, for its own purposes’.
The ICO said: “[EDDC] has argued that it needs to change offices as, overall, doing so would save the public money compared to staying in its current offices.
“The public, however, cannot know whether this is true without further information being open for them to scrutinise.”

PegasusLife hopes to build a retirement community of 115 homes at Knowle, with some facilities open to the public. The site is allocated for 50 homes in EDDC’s Local Plan.
The planning application is set to go to its development management committee next month.

An EDDC spokeswoman said: “The council has received the decision from the ICO and is considering the content.” ‘