A PUBLIC meeting is being held next Wednesday to discuss a controversial planning application to build a farm shop and café targeting tourists beside the A30 at Whiddon Down.

Applicant JW Mann Ltd is proposing to spend £500,000 on the development, which it says will create five full-time and five part-time jobs to be filled by people ‘recruited where possible from the local area’.

The Suffolk-based company is also promising that the development, described as a ‘new, high-quality gateway development to West Devon adjacent to the A30’ will boost the local economy by stocking produce from local farms.

The application submitted to West Devon Borough Council promises to donate a percentage of profits would be gifted to the local community and proposes a profit share scheme with local farmers.

However local farmer Catherine Gillard is preparing to speak out against the proposal at an extraordinary meeting of Drewsteignton Parish Council on Wednesday night.

‘We live in a listed farm that is 600 metres from the site and I feel quite passionately against it,’ she said. ‘The position where they are proposing to put this farm shop is in a really elevated position. This obviously means this building is going to be very prominent and I cannot really see that the building will add character to what is basically open countryside.

‘It would impact on us because it is on a minor road. Local residents generally pull into the layby which is the proposed entrance to see around the bend.

‘We also worry that when you are coming from the Okehampton direction on the A30 and come off for Whiddon Down there is only a very very short distance to the right-hand turn to this site.’

She said the proposed development, which will have parking for 50 cars, amounted to a service station by any other name – when there was already a service station to the south of the A30 at Whiddon Down.

‘It won’t affect our business but our friends have recently set up a genuine farm shop on the old A30 near Whiddon Down on a small scale,’ she said. ‘They are a young couple with two children who have started this on a council-owned farm.’

The applicant, however, says the proposal will be different from the other nearby service stations at Whiddon Down, Okehampton and Sourton Down because it would give local producers a slice of the pie.

It lists 25 local food and drink businesses which it says are interested in supplying the shop.

‘The farm shop aims to champion local Devon food, harness transiting tourist trade and provide economic stimulus to the local area and provide a new route to market for localised suppliers and food producers,’ wrote the applicant.

‘The shop will promote its use of local suppliers and producers, as well as dealing directly with farmers to ensure the shop champions the best local produce from the local parishes.’

The application will be decided by a forthcoming meeting of West Devon Borough Council’s development control committee.

It will be discussed at a Drewsteignton Parish Council meeting at Whiddon Down Village Hall at 7pm on Wednesday (September 5).