Campaigners call public meeting to rally support

A new campaigning group is being launched to protect and promote Seaton’s western flank

Its aim is to safeguard the natural environment and the area’s architectural heritage from ‘inappropriate development’.

It also plans to ‘further the interests of this side of the town in general’.

A public meeting to officially launch the West Seaton and Seaton Hole Association will take place in the town hall at 7pm, on Thursday, March 5.

A spokesman for the group, semi-retired university professor Martin Shaw, said amongst its key aims is to halt harmful development in the area.

He told the Herald: “The group came together after East Devon District Council approved a planning application in Seaton Hole last summer – to add a fourth storey to a three-storey modern house - overriding the unanimous objections of local people and Seaton town and district councillors and disregarding the Seaton Town Design Statement.”

Mr Shaw said the group was currently concerned about a proposal to built a block of flats with a car park on the site of a 1920s’ bungalow in Castle Hill.

He said the group sees it as ‘the thin end of the wedge’ for West Seaton.

Group members also believe the Seaton Conservation Area should be extended to the west of the town.

Mr Shaw said the new organisation will tackle a wide range of issues affecting the west of Seaton, not least the on-going problem of coastal erosion, which has seen part of Old Beer Road collapse into the sea.

“The council policy appears to be to simply allow it to occur,” he said.

“They don’t seem to be interested in doing anything to stabilise it at the top and keep access to the beach open.

“We are not a bunch of NIMBYs,” he stressed. “We will support anything that would benefit the town.”