Cranbrook 'pitfalls' will be avoided in next new town

New settlement with 10,000 homes needed

A new town planned for East Devon won't suffer the same issues that befell Cranbrook, it's been claimed.

The district coucil's planner have given assurances they are “absolutely” doing everything they can to avoid similar pitfalls - and a specific policy has been agreed to guide how East Devon’s next new town will be developed.

Cranbrook’s residents moved in well before much of the infrastructure was in place, with its first supermarket only opening this week, more than 12 years after its potential customers wanted to go shopping.

A masterplan for parts of Cranbrook town centre is also now hitting its final stages.

The next new town, which will need to accommodate at least 10,000 homes – although only 3,300 before 2042 – efforts are being made to bring infrastructure development forward far more quickly, and in some cases even before any homes are built.

East Devon District Council’s strategic planning committee supported a suggested amendment to a policy, stating the council would “establish a robust and sustainable new town-wide stewardship vehicle” and governance strategy early in the planning process.

It means they will be more careful next time round.

Cllrr Kevin Blakey (Independent, Cranbrook), supported it, but urged the council to make sure it was being bold.

“I don’t think it goes far enough,” he said. “The new town really has to be almost entirely controlled by this new body… because without that, if we hand the entirety of the development plan to the developers as normal, I’m not sure we’ll be very much further forward.”

He added that East Devon should “exercise a lot more control over what is built"  than they did in Cranbrook.

“And the way you do that is by way of ownership, so I would like to see a stronger, more ambitious wording used, as we have to take a firm grip over the majority of what will be developed in the new town,” he said.

Cllr Geoff Jung (Liberal Democrat, Woodbury and Lympstone) said East Devon had “learned its lesson” and that the approach for the new town “seems like a really good step.”

Ed Freeman, East Devon’s assistant director for planning strategy and development management, said the local plan could only go so far in dictating what type of control East Devon wants over the development of its new town, adding that further documents could be more prescriptive.

In terms of the council’s efforts to better control how the new town is developed, strategic planning chair Cllr Todd Olive (Liberal Democrat, Rockbeare and Whimple) added: “We are absolutely doing it, 100 per cent, even if it can’t appear here.”