Work on ‘once-in-a-generation’ Newton Abbot project back on track

'Newton Abbot is a fantastic place'

Work to clear a Newton Abbot site ready for a new housing development is back on track after delays.

Now members of Teignbridge Council are making up their minds exactly what to do with it.

Bulldozers have flattened most of the site off Bradley Lane ready for building to start. The council also wants to knock down the derelict Vicarys Mill building despite conservationists saying that razing the old paper mill is ‘cultural vandalism’.

The council says it is costing hundreds of thousands of pounds every year just to maintain it.

An agreement to demolish units elsewhere on the site was first passed in 2021, but a deal with a would-be developer lapsed last summer with no work having been started.

The council then decided to abandon a planned town centre cinema scheme and spend the £2.4 million of the government’s Future High Streets money on Bradley Lane instead.

Updating members of the council’s executive committee on progress, Cllr David Palethorpe (Lib Dem, Ipplepen) said the demolition had been slowed by the presence of asbestos and the discovery that a leat running under the site split in an unmapped direction.

Now, he said, work was back on track.

“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to deliver a high-impact development on a brilliantly-located brownfield site right in the heart of Newton Abbot,” he added.

Up to 100 badly-needed new homes are expected to be built on the site, and Cllr Palethorpe described it as a ‘shared vision’ between the council and the community.

He said it could include affordable housing, social housing and extra care homes, along with some leisure uses.

“We are committed to delivering a really meaningful development on this site for the long-term benefit of the community,” he added. “It will not be driven just by finance, but by what the community requires over the next 20 to 30 years.”

Cllr Palethorpe told the meeting that the government had changed the way the Future High Streets money should be spent, meaning that instead of having to be spent by the end of March, it just had to be ‘committed’  by that date.

“All the money from Future High Streets has been committed on projects to enhance Newton Abbot,” he said.

Major construction work on the town centre Queen Street project was complete, he said, and trees had been planted alongside the redesigned road.

“Newton Abbot is a fantastic place,” he went on. “We need to support it and all its businesses.”