Right Homes, Right Price, Right Place
Of around 100 planning applications we respond to across the county every year, half involve housing. These range from half-a-dozen premium modern holiday ‘cottages’ in the edge of a picturesque village to estates of 1000 or more newbuilds expanding a town, or creating a completely new one.
Urban Expansion & Housing Need
With the ‘housing crisis’ producing ever-expanding targets for local authorities, Devon has seen a rapid increase in urban expansion. Large towns are all seeing multiple new estates stretching their boundaries, small towns are sometimes almost doubling in size, and some places such as the Newton Abbot area are becoming major conurbations by default.
These are often piecemeal developments rather than planned place-making, particularly where local authorities’ Local Development Plans have been challenged by developers and – all too often – declared ‘out-of-date’ by the government’s Planning Inspectorate, to speed up housebuilding.
We help local communities contest this wholesale change where it is contrary to planning principles or damaging to the environment or landscape.
We have also undertaken two ground-breaking studies, with our research partner ORS, to show that successive governments’ housing targets have significantly exaggerated the country’s – and indeed the country’s – housing needs, leading to grossly inflated targets and a free-for-all for developers.
New Towns
Devon has built two ‘new towns’ in recent years – Cranbrook near Exeter and Sherford near Plymouth – and is now embarking on two more with the government’s assistance under the New Town Initiative. Again, both of these are focused on our two cities. Marlcombe will be a new town to the south of Cranbrook, east of Exeter, while the second ‘New Town’ involves the revitalisation of the centre of Plymouth.
We support development that is well planned with proper community infrastructure, close to transport links and health facilities, undertaken with sensitivity to its environment, adjacent landscapes and natural resources. We closely monitor the new towns’ planning and development processes, often working with local interest groups to mitigate the effects of what is, necessarily, a major change to the landscape. There is also a huge expansion taking place in and around Cullompton, including the 5,000 houses of Culm Garden Village.’
Brownfield First
We believe strongly that development should be planned organically and sympathetically to enhance communities – from the largest towns to the smallest villages – and provide the benefits of community infrastructure and social facilities to incoming residents. Local and regional developers can often play an important role in this.
Instead, the government’s policies and pressurised planning system constantly enables the ‘Big Six’ housebuilders to plant huge housing estates in greenfield sites, with minimal community infrastructure and significant transport problems. Greenfields are chosen because they are very cheap and easy to develop.
But CPRE have shown that existing brownfield sites in Devon could provide up to 16,700 new homes before any more green fields need to be bulldozed. Across the South West, identified brownfield sites could accommodate more than 76,000 new homes. On average 60% of these sites already have full or outline planning permission, meaning they could be developed rapidly and reduce the need to encroach on undeveloped greenfield land and productive farmland.
Social & affordable housing
We are not against all housing. There is a huge need for social and affordable housing in Devon, where house prices are around 20% above the (already high) national average and wages are around 20% below. The ‘housing ladder’ is a myth for most young Devonians without major benefactors, and long-term rental property has been largely removed from the market by rising property prices and AirBnB-style schemes.
With our members’ wholehearted support we prioritise projects to increase the stock of social and truly affordable housing for local people. But the key issue is land value. It’s a ‘Catch-22’: if land is likely to get planning permission, it becomes too expensive to build low-cost housing on. That’s why in 2025, we have actively supported a Community Land Trust proposal for 9 social-rent homes close to the Braunton Great Field, a site which cannot normally get planning permission because of heritage objections, and thus was a rare opportunity for the community to obtain land at an affordable price.
Our mission to Protect Rural England means we need to ensure that rural economies can thrive – and that means local workers have homes they can afford to live in.
Free Planning Advice for Members
Most people don’t think about planning at all – until it arrives on their doorstep or over their garden fence. The planning process is a dry, arcane subject which takes time to understand and is full of pitfalls for those coming at it from a standing start.
That’s why CPRE exists, to be a permanently available source of planning expertise to people and communities when they need it. Our members can access free basic planning advice on issues that arise: how to support or object to an application, what is and is not a material consideration, which aspects of the application could be challenged effectively.
Our Parish and Town Council members benefit from free Planning Workshops every year to refresh themselves on the basics they need to know as statutory consultees, and find out what changes have been made to the planning system, or are coming down the track.