“Another ill-conceived SHDC project collapses.

“Council taxpayers are left picking up the £485,000 bill - not including officer time.

“No one takes responsibility or is held to account.

“An executive member tries to blame the residents of Ivybridge, threatening to refuse any future investment. And the council issues an official press release thanking the team involved - for wasting your money presumably! The number of failing council projects continues unabated, and £100,000s of taxpayers’ money is wasted.

“Over the past few years SHDC has entered into a series of calamitous schemes.

“The Premiere Inn and development of the quay in Kingsbridge (£100,000+), the harbour office at Whitestrand, Salcombe (£100,000+), Solar Park venture (£150,000), and various community housing projects (c. £1.5 million) – to name a few.

“At the same time the council has delivered just a handful of extra business units. It is in the process of building a few ‘affordable’ houses at St Anne’s Chapel, but it probably would have been cheaper to buy open market houses and then rent them out at reduced rates!

“The Aldi project has been particularly worrying. Putting aside the pros and cons of the actual scheme, why did the council volunteer to borrow £9 million to build the supermarket for Aldi? Why was the council shouldering all the planning and construction costs? As a result of the project failure, SHDC, meaning council taxpayers have lost £485,000 and Aldi lost nothing.

“Why did council taxpayers find themselves in the position of shouldering all these risks and the resultant waste? Calls for the Audit Committee to scrutinise a detailed business plan (and other projects) have fallen on deaf ears.

“Requests to see independent reports on car parking assumptions were obstructed by the assets team. An attempt by Cllr Victor Abbott to allow the whole project to be studied by the Overview & Scrutiny Committee were rejected by the majority administration at Full Council.

“A comedy of errors, which would be funny if it wasn’t so expensive, have cost council taxpayers literally £millions.

“To begin with the project was about making money out of SHDC assets. However, once the outline business plan had been worked out, it changed to a regeneration project for Ivybridge.

“And now it’s been terminated, it was all about providing cheap food during the cost-of-living crisis – I would suggest that spending £485,000 subsidising local families might have worked better! To be fair, there was initial support for the Aldi.

“However, once the details started to emerge the mood changed. Car parking spaces, especially long-term, would be lost. There was little or no improvement to the public realm. A new skate park was far from certain.

“A catastrophic loss of vegetation and mature trees and associated biodiversity.

“The devastating visual impact of a multi-storey carpark and box like Aldi building – all created a less than positive feeling. The Ivybridge Chamber of Commerce were also very concerned, questioning the assumptions made about regeneration. How could the loss of car parking for 8 months during construction be made good? And following covid, the town had already regenerated itself with only one vacant premises on the High Street. The Council refused to listen.

Council taxpayers should not have pay for this . From the disastrous waste collection contract, to the latest Aldi fiasco, £millions will be lost. When will SHDC investigate what is going on and when will they stop wasting your money on projects no one wants?”

***South Hams District Council have made the decision not to comment on Councillor Brazils Column at this stage and will respond in due course***