A row of garages could be demolished under plans by Mid Devon District Council to add a dozen affordable homes to its social housing stock.
The proposal for 12 affordable properties will be debated by the council’s planning committee on Wednesday 9 September. The scheme would see 18 garages at Roundhill in Tiverton knocked down to make way for modular homes built by Zed Pods. The firm has worked on several other affordable housing schemes for Mid Devon, focusing on brownfield sites for small-scale developments.
However, 20 residents have written to the council to oppose the application. They raised concerns about insufficient parking, extra traffic on roads that are effectively single track because of street parking, and possible subsidence of existing properties.
One resident, Krystina Orchard, said emergency service vehicles already struggled to access homes on the road at times because of parking issues. She also feared her property could be overlooked.
“When we bought this property, although we had neighbours we were not overlooked at the front,” she said. “The property only had garages at the front of the house so light was not blocked. Now there is a risk of light being reduced and being overlooked.”
Some residents also complained about how long the process had taken. The first pre-application feedback to Zed Pods was in May 2024, suggesting the firm spent months preparing its initial proposal. Originally the company hoped to build 20 homes on the site, but pre-planning meetings reduced that to eight, before it rose again to 12.
The development would include 16 allocated parking spaces and 22 unallocated ones. Some trees would be removed, but Zed Pods said the more significant trees, including a “high quality maple”, would be retained.
Earlier this year, Mid Devon announced its Eastlands development had turned a former area of underused garages and parking into five modern homes. That development has three two-bedroom and two three-bedroom houses, each with private gardens, and a total of 16 car parking spaces, including nine unallocated spaces to the north of the site. Despite heavy rain and storms extending some of the final landscaping, the project was completed in five months after the factory-built modules arrived in September 2025.
However, some other Zed Pods sites in Mid Devon have faced delays. Two sets of modular homes in a Mid Devon village still had not been completed earlier this year, even though one of the supposed quick-build properties was approved in 2023. Zed Pods describes itself as the UK leading modular housing company, yet its approved plans for a home on Fir Close in Willand are still not in place years after approval. A scheme for seven homes in Willand’s Somerlea has also not been completed, according to residents. Approval for those homes came only last year, but the quick-build nature of the homes means they have taken longer to finish than predicted.
Mid Devon District Council views Zed Pods homes as a quick way to bolster its social housing provision. It has previously highlighted award wins for schemes at St Andrews House in Cullompton and shortlistings for Shapland Place in Tiverton. The council has also said that developing brownfield sites can lead to unexpected delays, as happened at Fir Close due to utility delays.
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