PLANS for an ambitious multi-million pound scheme to redevelop a riverfront site in Teignmouth have been deferred.

Members of Teignbridge Council’s planning committee voted in favour of defering the application after chairman Cllr Linda Goodman-Bradbury suggested there had been further information put forward.

Tuesday’s meeting heard there had been a number of ‘late representations’.

Cllr Goodman-Bradbury proposed the application be deferred due to ‘a lot of late information circulated to all members by the applicant’.

She said committee members needed time to consider all the new information before being able to review and comment and then make a decision on the application.

The application is to regenerate the Riverside Boatyard on the banks of the River Teign.

The plans include nine residential units in three blocks of up to five bedroom town houses, workshops and office space and a proposed two-storey parking structure along with beach huts and boat storage.

Developers Teignmouth Maritime Properties Ltd are hoping to regenerate the area to combine housing, offices and industrial space while improving the existing boatyard storage and repair facilities.

The company sees the plans, which were first submitted in June 2020, as an opportunity to ‘comprehensively redevelop’ a prominent waterside site into a ‘high quality maritime facility’.

The scheme also aims to provide additional employment opportunities.

The application has attracted a number of comments, positive and negative.

Some responses have been in favour of upgrading and improving a ‘neglected’ site which had become an eyesore.

There was also support for providing further employment in the area.

However, concerns were expressed at the scale of the proposed development and the lack of smaller and affordable housing.

Comments in support of the project say it will be an improvement to what is an ‘eyesore’ site in disrepair while adding to employment chances in the area.

Objectors say the proposals would create congestion and access difficulties as well as arguing the size of the development is too large.

The Shellfish Association of Great Britain has objected to the plans as it claims there would be a ‘significant’ impact on the shell fishery in the River Teign.

The developers say the scheme would provide living and working accommodation while hoping to attract greater numbers of new boat and water-based leisure users to the area, generating economic benefits for the town.