Sort out our school, hospital and sewerage system and build fewer houses in Ottery is the message from the town council to EDDC.

This is the response councillors have written to be read out at the district council’s Local Development Framework (LDF) meeting on Tuesday.

Ottery Town Council were asked to react to the draft plan created by the LDF panel for future housing and industrial growth in East Devon over the next 15 years.

And in it they will say the sewage treatment facility at Fluxton is running at capacity and is a major barrier to any development in the town.

Similarly they say The King’s School is already oversubscribed and a new site needs to be identified, as the town council seeks to argue ‘infrastructure to service developments is provided at the time of building’.

The response to the LDF panel will also ask that a maximum of 300 houses are built in the town in the period to 2026, a third less than the figure EDDC has so far come up with.

In their statement councillors request that Ottery St Mary Hospital ‘provides additional services and regains its 24 hour Minor Injuries Unit’.

But there are areas the council encourages development in the town, identifying the section of land between Finnemore Industrial Estate and the hospital as ‘appropriate for housing’, and saying that 90 of the houses built in Ottery should be at the disused factory site, writing that ‘one-off larger developments are preferable to many smaller developments’.

They will also request less houses to be built in the rest of the parish, setting growth in Tipton St John and West Hill at five per cent, meaning a maximum of 12 and 26 houses respectively, far fewer than the 50 homes allocated by the LDF as a ‘hub village’.

Ottery Town Council will deliver its statement at Tuesday afternoon’s meeting at EDDC headquarters at Knowle, along with statements from Sidmouth, Exmouth, Honiton, Seaton, Budleigh Salterton and Axminster councils as the LDF panel look to finalise its future housing and growth strategy.