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COMMENT
Exeter City Council scraps own “unachievable” carbon emissions target
Martin Redfern
In an extraordinary reversal, the city council removed the goal of achieving carbon neutral operations by 2022 from its corporate risk register at an Audit & Governance committee meeting last week.
So what was it doing on the risk register, where it’s been since November 2019? It seems the council has been confusing energy policy with decarbonisation.
Let’s hope the planned “net zero delivery team” won’t be prone to such schoolboy errors when it finally comes on stream in March next year.
By then it will have been more than three years since the council declared a climate emergency: let’s hope the team comes equipped with a dictionary, too.
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EXETER CHIEFS members have voted in favour of a takeover of the club proposed by Black Knight Sports and Entertainment. The US investment company, led by CEO Bill Foley, bought AFC Bournemouth in 2022 and is a minority shareholder in Edinburgh club Hibernian F.C.. The vote follows a January announcement by Exeter Chiefs chairman Tony Rowe that he was seeking a new major shareholder for the club, made a few days before Exeter Chiefs owners Exeter Rugby Group reported a £10.3 million loss. Tony Rowe said that the proposed takeover “does not represent a firm offer” and is “just a non-binding expression of interest at this stage”. He added: “Hopefully, an offer will follow and we can begin negotiating the terms of the sale”.
EXETER CITY COUNCIL’S RECYCLING RATE was ranked in the bottom tenth among councils in England which collect household waste last year. According to government figures just 29% of the household waste it collected was sent for recycling, compared with 54% by neighbouring Teignbridge District Council and 60% by East Devon District Council, which was among the best-performing councils in the country on this metric. Exeter’s residual waste performance was better than North Devon, Plymouth and Torbay councils, but East Devon recorded the lowest residual waste rate of all.
SOUTH WEST WATER has been ordered by the the Environment Agency to fix scores of faults including leaking pipes, cracked tanks, seeping liquids and faulty monitoring equipment as well as address poor general maintenance across its network. The issues were discovered during inspections which have taken place over the past year at 860 South West Water sites in Devon and Cornwall, such as sewage treatment works and storm tanks.
Two luxury city centre apartment blocks are being advertised for sale by Nooko, the developer responsible for renovating the ROYAL CLARENCE HOTEL. The company is seeking £13.5 million for Paternoster House, which it described as a “blueprint for Exeter’s future”, where several of the 29 flats in the block are currently being marketed to rent for between £1,950 and £2,383 per month. It is also looking to sell Concord House, a nearby block of 28 flats in South Street, for £7 million. A two-bed flat there is currently being marketed to rent for £2,167 per month. Both sale advertisements claim that the buildings are fully let.
Exeter City Council has finally published an EXETER PORT AND HARBOUR BUSINESS PLAN after repeated requests from river and estuary users to see the document, which was apparently prepared three years ago. Despite purporting to cover the three years from 2025-26 onwards the plan only includes a summary budget for 2024-25. When an Exeter Harbour Board member asked whether the council intended to remedy this by adding forecast future budgets to the plan, a council officer said that the 2024-25 budget would “probably be the total budget over the next three years”. They added that there was “some work to be done around budget arrangements” and that “any income changes” would “need to be considered”.
Market returns for 2026 season with stalls selling vintage items, jewellery, crafts, clothing, records, food and drink.
FORE STREET
FRIDAY 22 MAY 2026
The Dreaming
Debut show from theatre company Thresh & Bray explores the convergence of personal experience, ancestral threads and nature.
EXETER PHOENIX
SUNDAY 31 MAY 2026
Mindful Market
Vintage items, handmade gifts and baked goods from local traders with wellbeing activities including yoga, crafts and hula-hooping.
THE BIRDHOUSE
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