T R STONE, managing director, Terence Stone (Development) Ltd, writes:

I note your front page article, July 3 edition, and comment, but the local authority is largely responsible for the delay in providing new homes in all categories.

We have been endeavouring to obtain approval on two major local sites for 20 years, but the delays and resubmissions required under the Local Plan fiasco continues and we still await the outcome.

We have some nine acres of land at Broadmeadow, Teignmouth, tucked away and inconspicuous below the Kingsway blocks of flats and our first phase, Broadmeadow View starter homes on the New Road link we created at the top of Mill Lane, an ideal location for a mix of housing.

However, we have received little encouragement over the years. More surprisingly, a more recent major comprehensive scheme has not as yet been agreed where our two national partners would provide the encapsulation and treatment of the dangerous old tip, a first class superstore, a new access roundabout, and the clearance and replacement of the hotch potch of old trade buildings in a fine new trading estate covering a larger area for local business, all in conjunction with my company providing a major mixed housing development separated at the east side of the valley.

We have provided hundreds of homes in Devon and Cornwall, particularly in the Teignbridge area, but again for no good reason we have been prevented from completing the last portion, within the existing hedge boundaries, of our major 12-acre site at Meadowpark, Dawlish.

This is incomprehensible given that we were allowed to complete the road system (leading to the land and our local yard and depot) including sewers and infrastructure to current standards, but were denied the right to complete the final 15 to 20 houses on this road, all with panoramic sea views.

The same intransigence has affected the approval of the last home for completion off High House Close for many years, despite its fine sea views and housing on all sides and many submissions as suggested by the planning department.

Consequently this results in the loss of local jobs and of housing supply over the last ten or 12 years.

Surely by now a sensible conclusion should have been reached enabling rapid provision of houses for the local community.