Block Management in Paignton

Paignton harbour is one of the three enclosed harbours inside the statutory harbour of Tor Bay. The shoreline management plan runs Paignton across seven policy units. The main seafront from Hollicombe Head to Roundham Head, taking in Preston Sands, Paignton Sands, the harbour, Paignton Green and the pier, is hold the line across all three epochs to 2105. Two units differ and both matter. Broadsands is the only managed realignment unit on the entire Torbay frontage, and the plan's own action list notes that the realignment depends on private funding and warns that the beach may be lost if it is not implemented. Goodrington Sands is recorded inconsistently between two official datasets, as hold the line in one and managed realignment in the medium term in the other, with the plan's own text supporting the latter while acknowledging that the current intent is to protect critical seafront infrastructure including a public sewer. Neither should be stated without that caveat.

Metalwork is where coastal exposure shows up first and costs most. The standards put a high-salinity coastal atmosphere in category C5-M, losing over 80 micrometres of steel in year one against 1.3 to 25 inland, so railings, balustrades and fixings on a Paignton block are surveyed more often and the reserve fund is modelled on the findings.

Paignton's neighbourhood plan, made in June 2019, refuses HMOs outright inside the town's Core Tourism Investment Area. The plan publishes the consultation behind that: 80.5 per cent of respondents backed keeping HMOs outside the tourism area and 82.6 per cent backed rigorous enforcement. Taking a building inside that area out of holiday use runs the other way and needs evidence that there is no reasonable prospect of continuing it, which makes it a viability case rather than a design one. Under the Torbay Local Plan 2012 to 2030, adopted on 10 December 2015, Paignton carries the largest housing target of the three towns at around 4,290 new homes, and it is the only one with numbered sub-allocations, at Preston Down Road, Great Parks, Collaton St Mary, Yalberton and White Rock. Its neighbourhood plan was made by full council on 19 June 2019 after a referendum on 2 May carried by 10,379 votes to 1,430 on a turnout of 33.1 per cent, the lowest of the three Torbay plans, and the forum that produced it ceased to exist in December 2022 when its designation expired, which does not affect the plan itself. A named and costed coastal scheme is under way: the Paignton and Preston Waterfront works, approved by cabinet in January 2020 at just over 3.1 million pounds, now stand at 17.5 million in the council's 2026 capital plan, funded entirely by grants, with construction started in September 2025.