The Holiday Village

Looking back over some past posts it seems some people are confused about whether we would like to keep the holiday village or not.

Time and again we have said that we want to keep THE SITE that the holiday village is on as overnight tourist accommodation. However, the current owners of the holiday village (Hollybush Hotels) are tied into a very complicated situation with Liatris which means that there can be no long-term investment in it so, with no long-term investment, it would be foolish to think that things can stay as they are (even though the holiday village operates at 80% capacity all year round).

In its Local Plan EDDC has said specifically that the site of the holiday village should remain zoned for overnight tourist accommodation. However, Liatris uses the excuse that, because they have to raise the land on the site with a million tons of infill, they can't afford to put anything on it but lots of houses and 2 massive supermarket sheds.

EDDC appearsto take this at face value even though,in their objection, the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England points out that this is a well-used tactic of developers and EDDC would be naive if they fell for it (I am paraphrasing here but you can see their objection on EDDCs web pages).

What we do say is:

1. It is not inconceivable that you could upgrade the holiday village in such a way as to make it attractive to modern eco-tourists (with eco-lodges) as part of a water compatible development (see post below).

2. Were you to do this you could probably keep the two large buildings and refurbish them to look attractive. The one at the back would remain a swimming pool and gym. The one at the front could house community facilities, tourist facilities, the SUSTRANS cycle way, etc, with no difficulty.

However, unless EDDC puts the needs of the people of Seaton community before the needs of the developer community this cannot happen.