Kingsbridge Town Council has agreed to tell South Hams District Council “build truly affordable housing - if you don’t, we will” in response to the Quayside proposals.

KTC called an extraordinary town council meeting on Tuesday night to agree on their official response to the Quayside regeneration proposals.

After discussing the ideas for hours, they decided to tell SHDC that they “couldn’t support the plans in their current form” but would wholeheartedly support the plans for affordable and community housing behind the Quayside.

They proposed to tell South Hams District Council that they wouldn’t be “blackmailed” into giving their support to large commercial buildings on the Quay, for the “carrot” that was the improvements to the town square area and the community housing projects.

They said that SHDC didn’t need the development on the Quayside to fund the community housing projects, they could “borrow it like every other developer” and were in a better position because they “own the land” already.

Cllr Dina Bex and Cllr Mike Jennings both said that in a meeting with David Parkes, Development Specialist at SHDC, went on record to say that Kingsbridge Town Council “can have that land [area 3 and 4 of the masterplan] and the access to the £2million in funding” to build truly affordable housing, around 50 per cent of market value, for the people of Kingsbridge.

The town council also agreed to feed back responses from members of the public who gave their views at both that meeting on Tuesday and the large public meeting in St Edmunds Church on Monday night.

Read the full story in the Gazette on Friday, as well as a round up of the public meeting held in St Edmunds Church on Monday night.

All the plans can be viewed on SHDC’s website: www.southhams.gov.uk/kingsbridgequayside which includes a link to the consultation questionnaire. The public consultation runs until midnight on Sunday, July 9.