A CONTROVERSIAL plan to build a farm shop serving tourists beside the A30 at Whiddon Down has been recommended for approval by West Devon Borough Council.

Jack Mann’s application for a farm shop and café with parking for 50 cars would ‘provide a significant benefit to the local economy’, said planning officer Matt Jones.

The application was to have been considered at a meeting of West Devon Borough Council’s development management and licensing committee on Tuesday (October 16). However at the last minute, a meeting to discuss the application was deferred and it will now be considered by the meeting in November.

Being proposed for a greenfield site to the north of the road, it has attracted 34 letters of objection from locals.

However, the planning officer, mirroring the comments in six letters of support, said it would provide ‘a platform for marketing local goods’ to both tourists and locals.

The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) is among those objecting to the application.

Penny Mills, director of CPRE Devon, said she was ‘shocked’ that it was being recommended for approval.

‘I’ve received numerous calls from local residents who are extremely upset and bewildered why all their valid concerns are being ignored,’ she said.

‘The recent parish council meeting was packed with local objectors.

‘CPRE Devon submitted a strong objection; it’s just not the right location for this retail development.

‘It will spoil the countryside and is in an unsustainable location.

‘We trust that the elected councillors will act in the interests of the local community and the countryside and refuse the application.’

Drewsteignton Parish Council is among those who are objecting to the application.

Councillors voted to send a letter of objection after hearing comments from locals at a packed parish council meeting on September 5. Among concerns raised were the fact that the development would be built on open countryside, would make an already dangerous junction with the A30 worse and was a ‘speculative’ development which would compete against existing farm shops in the area.

The applicant, Jack Mann, told the meeting that it was his long-held ‘passion and dream’ to open a farm shop on the site to the north of the A30.

‘I genuinely believe from the bottom of my heart that this project can do real good in the community,’ he said.

The farm shop would be different from other services on the A30, he said, because it would stock locally produced food and drink.

He is suggesting it would create jobs both directly and in businesses supplying the farm shop.

However, one resident said ‘this is not a farm shop, this is a services’.