LEGAL opinion is being sought after a fully wheelchair accessible woodland retreat was given planning permission near Slapton.

The retreat, the brainchild of Woolston resident Paddy Costeloe who has been a wheelchair-user since a boating accident many years ago, was granted planning permission in December 2015, but a legal challenge against the decision has recently been lodged.

Christina Knight is one of the group of local objectors who say their solicitor will give them an opinion on whether they should apply for a judical review.

Christina said that their main reason for objecting to the retreat for disabled people is that ‘if the development does go ahead then I firmly believe that this could become a landmark case because it will have set a precedent that will open the doors to development on a huge scale within such sites across the entire country.

‘Extinct is forever and once gone areas such as this can never be brought back.’

She continued to call it ‘an indisputable fact’ that the area sited for the development is in ‘totally the wrong place to be of any use whatsoever to people with disabilities’.

She said she cared for her mother, who was wheelchair bound for ten years and called it ‘tragic and upsetting that so much of our beautiful world is unavailable to disabled individuals’ but said it was ‘a fact’ that without ‘concreting over everything to provide access this will unfortunately always be the case’.

The group of objectors also point to the steepness of the site, the narrow lanes leading into Lower Coltscombe and the impact on the environment that the site would cause.

Paddy Costeloe, however, believes that the needs of disabled people and the protection of the countryside ‘are both equally important’ and can be ‘achieved synergistically’.

He continued: ‘Any argument which infers that one precludes the other is a spurious attempt to mislead public opinion.

‘We are NOT going to destroy the landscape in any way as the objectors claim, because the tranquil and natural environment of the site is the very thing we want to offer to our guests.

‘Picture a person who is site impaired, sitting on one of our guest balconies within the trees being able to listen to the sound of the stream and the birds singing, experiencing and enjoying a small piece of the South Hams countryside. Why would we want to destroy the very thing which we want to offer to our guests?

Read more in the Kingsbridge and Salcombe Gazette