VILLAGERS turned out in their droves to slam a scheme for housing and facilities on greenbelt land in ‘geriatric’ Chelford.

More than 150 residents packed out Chelford Village Hall on Thursday, June 29, to hear developer David Hughes’ proposal to attract younger residents.

The 68-year-old, who lives in Chelford, began the meeting with a 10-minute presentation explaining the benefits of his scheme, and admitted he had a commercial interest in the site.

But residents then spent half an hour hitting back at Mr Hughes’ claims the village had become ‘geriatric’ and ‘grey’, which he first made in a pamphlet sent out to homes across Chelford.

Michael Jehan, 73, said: “I’m most surprised you have not apologised after what you said in the pamphlet.

“There are a lot of ‘geriatrics’ sat here and we have a lot going on for us. After the way you wrote this I couldn’t imagine you being in the same age bracket as many of us sat here today.”

Graham Denton said: “I’m 71 and I don’t care what the average age of Chelford is. The question really is – is it a problem for everyone here?”

After almost the entire audience shouted ‘no’, he added: “So if it’s not a problem then we don’t need to solve it.”

In his pamphlet, Mr Hughes had claimed that the average age of Chelford was 61, compared to the national average of 39.

He added that the village’s primary school and health centre would not be able to cope with the increased number of pupils and patients brought about by new developments on the old Stobart and Chelford Market sites – but all these claims were disputed by residents.

Kath Gildon, chairman of governors at Chelford Primary School, said: “We expect there will be 36 more children from those sites but the headteacher and governors will welcome them all to the school.

“The developers have agreed with section 106 money to build a new classroom for those children, to be completed in September 2018.”

Dr Helen Thomas, from Chelford Surgery, added that her workplace was ‘not under threat’ by any future developments.

Following the meeting, Mr Hughes told the Guardian he was disappointed the audience didn’t seem interested in the issues he wanted to raise.

He said: “I expect that the silent majority did not come to the meeting, but the most passionate people did.

“Clearly I’ve upset everybody by calling them geriatric, I think most of the complaints were about that. They wouldn’t listen to the issues, they just made clear that they thought they were called names.

“I certainly didn’t intend to offend them – I just wanted a striking headline to get people interested, and this was a phenomenal turn out, so I achieved that.”