Exeter Observer published the first edition of its new newsletter The Exeter Digest on Friday afternoon. The issue covered more ground than future editions will: the plan is to publish every week or two and include fewer stories in each.
Each newsletter will include regular updates covering Exeter Observer’s top stories, the news in brief, upcoming local government decisions and plans and regional issues that affect Exeter.
It will also keep subscribers up to date with ongoing consultations and policy-making around major challenges facing our city including democracy, development and the climate crisis.
The top stories in the first edition included analysis of the way Exeter City Council’s Chief Executive uses statistics selectively and so presents an unbalanced account of Exeter’s economic and environmental status and an account of how decisions taken behind closed doors in favour of commercial interests threaten a maritime and waterway heritage vision for Exeter’s historic quay, canal and canal basin.
A story about how Exeter City Council has allowed property assets to deteriorate while prioritising new schemes including the £44 million St Sidwell’s Point leisure centre, forcing it to identify assets for sale to pay for a £37.5 million maintenance backlog, also featured.
News in brief included plans to convert five of eleven retail units at The Depot on Cheeke Street to add nineteen rooms to the 715 bedrooms in the enormous student block and a report which placed Devon County Council among the UK’s top local authority fossil fuel investors.
It also included a story about local council investment of up to £7.3 million in a project to supply a development of 2500 homes in South West Exeter with heat which depends on the Marsh Barton waste incinerator, Exeter’s largest single source of carbon emissions.
Other news covered Independent county councillor Claire Wright’s decision to stand down at the forthcoming May local elections, a tribunal decision in favour of The St Leonard’s Neighbourhood Association vision for Mount Radford Lawn and the publication of yet another “Build Back Better” plan, this time by the Heart of the South West Local Enterprise Partnership.
The Exeter Digest #1 is available to read on this website, where you can subscribe to receive future editions by email.