TOTNES residents are being urged to attend a public meeting tonight (Friday) and give their backing to the revised Atmos Project which aims to deliver guaranteed affordable housing for local people.

Totnes Community Development Society revealed its ‘new vision’ for the redundant Dairy Crest site in the Totnes Times last week, a rival plan to the one put forward by owners of the site Fastglobe.

But Fastglobe, who bought the former creamery for £1.35m in 2021, has branded the TCDS plan as “undeliverable fantasy” and questioned how the plan can be financed.

TCDS, which still has the promise of a heritage lottery grant of £2.3-million to restore the listed Brunel building creating an arts and culture centre should the project come to fruition, is hoping people will speak with their feet tomorrow night and come out in their droves to support their scheme which includes 62 ‘real’ affordable homes, a training hotel, 7,000 sq ft of commercial space for business set ups and offices and a flood defence system.

The community development organisation was in line to buy the site in January 2020 from Dairy Crest when its contract was broken “on a technicality” and the site was sold to Fastglobe instead. TCDS remains committed to buying the site back “for the community”

A community referendum had already granted TCDS planning permission under the Localism Community Right to Build legislation when 86% of the people who voted said yes to its original scheme. Now years later the permission has lapsed and the site still remains derelict.

Fastglobe which was turned down by South Hams District for planning consent for holiday homes on the site has now increased its number of permanant homes to 25 to 79 and removed the holiday units and the fight is on.

Laurel Ellis, a leading campaigner for the Atmos Project, said people who wanted to live and work in the region were priced out of the market and there was a chronic shortage of homes for rent in South Hams and West Devon.. Demand was outstripping supply by a factor of nearly 600%. There was also a lack of rentable homes available for tenancies of longer than six months.

“The community had a plan to build over sixty properly affordable homes (for rent) which would have given those pushed out from the community a chance to live in it and contribute to it,” she said.

“Totnes needs these homes. Totnes Community Development Society is ready to develop the site on behalf of Totnes in a way that will benefit many generations to come; our children, our grand-children and great grand-children will be the beneficiaries. We cannot do this without the land, a hugely complicated site, which would be very difficult to develop profitably but could be developed for the benefit of our town.

“The site may at present be owned by Fastglobe but it belongs to the people of Totnes.”

Fastglobe spokesman Patrick Gillies said: “TCDS are pushing an undeliverable fantasy that they have no means to progress, on a site they don’t own.

“It really is time to move on, rather than promote some pipe dream that will never happen, no matter how laudable in its aims. We have resubmitted our application in accordance with the wishes of the local community and the council to see more housing on the site and should the scheme not be approved we will look at alternative options that have become available to us.”

Tonight's public meeting takes place at the Seven Stars Hotel in Totnes at 7pm.