You recently published my letter which provided an audit trail from the EU to the Local Planning process via the Regional Spatial Strategy, which had been developed by an unelected body, the SWRA, since dissolved.

Councillor Paul Diviani of East Devon District Council subsequently “rubbished” my claims and called my letter an example of “scaremongering” and “making cheap political points”.

In my published response to him in the Herald, I used the EDDC website to prove from council minutes that what I had claimed was correct, but response was there none from Cllr Diviani.

In your current issue, therefore, I was amazed in your report “Homes building boom planned” to learn that in order to reconcile an apparent “discrepancy” on the development plans for East Devon, following the recent Planning Inspectorate, EDDC is proposing to use... the Regional Spatial Strategy.

All of this just provides further proof that local councillors are no longer “servants of the people” as so many of your readers wish, but are mere agents for central government which, itself, is obeying the diktats contained in the EU Social Cohesion Policy.

This policy requires more and more immigration and development of all the homes and associated infrastructure.

It is, incidentally, the second largest EU budget policy after the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), taking some 40-plus per cent of the entire budget and where it is known the biggest degree of fraud and corruption occurs throughout the EU.

Local voters and taxpayers can do little in the face of this bureaucracy other than to vote for a genuine, informed referendum on our membership of the EU and our subsequent return to real self-government.

Only then can we decide what development we want in Sidmouth and elsewhere.

John P Kelly

UKIP East Devon