Last week, South Hams Development Management Committee voted by a majority of seven votes to three to approve plans to build 65 houses in Chillington.

The motion was passed against the recommendation of Stokenham Parish Council, and in the teeth of unprecedented and overwhelming opposition from local residents, some 90 per cent of whom lodged formal objections to the proposals.

A number of material grounds for refusal were raised, including the unsuitability of the site because of its proximity to a Category 3 Flood Zone, its lack of provision for pedestrian and cycle access, and its setting immediately adjacent to the AONB.

All these objections were swept aside by committee member Cllr Pearce. She urged her fellow councillors to approve the scheme, not on its merits, but on the unusual grounds that, having already jumped the gun and included the site in its new Joint Local Plan before planning permission was granted, SHDC could not very well refuse it now, or it might find itself having to explain this embarrassing inconsistency to a planning inspector.

Or to put it another way: members were asked to set aside the normal checks and balances of the planning process in order to spare district councillors’ blushes, and to allow them to deliver an arbitrary quota of housing to a deadline imposed from outside.

This should serve as a wake-up call to all those who care about the way our precious green space is being paved over in a rush to build largely unaffordable housing for which there is little or no local demand.

The Joint Local Plan was billed as a neighbourhood consultative process –indeed the consultation period has just begun – but this fiasco exposes it as yet another top-down planning exercise. Ill-thought-out development is imposed on local communities against their wishes because our district council are too timid to make a stand against the combined might of rapacious developers and a government in thrall to their every wish.

South Hams residents should be under no illusions. They have just five weeks to make their views on the Joint Local Plan known to their representatives. After that, if their community contains a referenced site, development will come if they want it or not.

Cllr Piers Spence, chairman, Stokenham Parish Council