PublicBenefitsfortheManyinsteadofPrivateProfitsfor.pdfVIP

Letter from Buckfastleigh by William Shepherd Tuesday 23rd July 2013 Public Benefits for the Many instead of Private Profits for the Few Suits, clip-boards and an occasional pair of high heels have been seen around town for the past few weeks…an unusual sight. In June 2013 several weeks before the first sightings, orange posters with ‘NO’ in black letters started appearing around town. By the start of July, windows on Fore Street were festooned with posters and T-shirts proclaiming ‘95% against IBA’ 1 and ‘No IBA Plant say 105 local businesses’. Are there really so many local enterprises? 2 Buckfastleigh viewed from the allotments This cesc dispatch consists of an Idiots Guide to Planning Inquiries, book-ended between some facts and comment about the Buckfastleigh Incinerator Bottom Ash (IBA) Plant Inquiry and a suggestion about how rural towns like Buckfastleigh might respond to the sudden appearance of Nasty No-Brainer Planning Applications in their midst. On the IBA Plant things have probably already gone too far for local comfort. Buckfastleigh now finds itself in a lottery with a one in three chance of losing, perhaps less, because there are three sites ‘under planner scrutiny’, and suspicions that the other two may be no more than decoys and Buckfastleigh the one the Projectors really want. But who knows what the future brings? 3 Mr Gilpin is the pantomime villain. For years he has run the small Whitecleave Quarry under the motorway on the edge of town just inside the Dartmoor National Park . On the side he knocks down jerry-built houses before builders move in to replace them with an improved version...or so it is hoped. His last job in Buckfastleigh was next to the Woodholme Car Park where the buses turn around before heading for Buckfast Abbey on their way to Newton Abbo