Ottery Town Council has told the district’s chief executive ‘the local planning system has failed us’ after a recent appeal decision and changes to housing policy.

In a letter to Mark Williams, Mayor Glyn Dobson said levels of growth proposed for the town were much higher than elsewhere in East Devon, and were ‘unsustainable’.

But a response from the head of East Devon District Council (EDDC) said Ottery needed to understand the wider national problem that not enough homes are being built.

Councillor Dobson said his colleagues are worried housing would increase by 22 per cent in the town if an application at the old factory site follows approvals at Island Farm and behind Butts Road, a total of around 400 new dwellings.

The mayor wrote: “This is very much more than proposed in the draft Local Plan and, indeed, substantially greater than elsewhere in the district.

“Local services, including schools and the GP health services, are stretched: it is doubtful that this level of rapid expansion is sustainable and any more would clearly not be.”

Cllr Dobson concluded by saying Ottery councillors doubt the ‘sustainability, the practicability and the deliverability’ of the proposed rate of construction, adding it was ‘doomed to fail’.

But Mr Williams said Ottery is: “At face value a ‘sustainable’ location for growth, and local demand to restrict housing is not of itself a good enough reason to refuse planning.”

The town council will discuss a response to the EDDC chief executive’s reply at Monday’s planning meeting in the Old Convent, starting at 7.30pm.