NOTES & SKETCHES  ⁄  ECONOMY & ENTERPRISE

How to inflate housing costs and influence people

Housing crisis  St sidwell's point 

Despite Exeter’s rapidly worsening housing crisis, the council has continued its relentless promotion of the city as a destination to potential incomers by commissioning a coterie of Instagram influencers to flog the place to their followers after spending a May weekend here.

Go South West England, Candace Abroad and Flying Fluskey (no kidding) duly produced various “journalism-style articles” discussing the city’s “culture and history” as part of a £10,000 marketing campaign, the cost of which is being split 50/50 between the council and GWR on the basis it promotes visiting Exeter by train.

One influencer said St Sidwell’s Point leisure centre had been built on the site of a recently-demolished bus station and described Jury’s Inn as both a “4-star” and “mid-range” hotel, before offering helpful detail on how to get to each by car and where to park.

Another encouraged visitors to “hop in a car” in the city centre to get to Dartmoor, or to drive to a Crediton cider orchard, and advised readers that of Exeter’s “three main shopping centres, all based around the High Street”, one is to be found at Countess Wear.

Perhaps it is unfair to expect council-commissioned communications to adhere to recognised fact-checking standards, but whether this expenditure meets public spending value for money criteria is another matter.

Meanwhile cider must be on the menu in council meetings, judging by a year-long project it has commissioned in conjunction with the university which “explores the complex ecology and cultures of cider-making” and “communal drinking culture”.

And it’s only a 25 minute drive from the council’s offices to the cider farm (this one near Tedburn St Mary) where various project-related events are taking place.


Community share offer
Community share offer
Exeter in brief
Exeter in brief

SOUTH WEST WATER owner Pennon Group has increased its shareholder dividend by nearly 11% to £112 million despite making a pre-tax loss of £8.5 million and being fined £2.15 million after pleading guilty to thirteen environmental offences committed across Devon and Cornwall. CEO Susan Davy said the company, which also owns Bristol Water, had “delivered improvements in environmental performance”

EXETER CITY COUNCIL member’s allowances and expenses came to a total of £409,000 in the year to March 2023, with council leader Phil Bialyk claiming £28,400 and receiving gifts and hospitality at Sandy Park stadium.

The city council has agreed to allow four music concerts at SANDY PARK STADIUM in June with up to 15,000 people in attendance, tickets for which have already been on sale for two months. Its planning committee heard accounts of extreme anti-social behaviour by visitors attending events at the venue as well as other adverse impacts on local residents and imposed traffic and parking, noise, litter and opening and closing time restrictions on the concerts.

An Ofsted monitoring report on DEVON COUNTY COUNCIL CHILDREN’S SERVICES, the fifth since the local authority was judged inadequate in January 2020, has found that the “quality of social work practice across Devon remains inconsistent”. Inspectors found “pockets of better practice” and “some positive changes” but said that weak management oversight, insufficient challenge and poor care planning all continue to cause problems. It also said a high turnover rate in agency social work staff, who make up more than 40% of the workforce, is having an adverse impact.

SOUTH WEST WATER owner Pennon Group has increased its shareholder dividend by nearly 11% to £112 million despite making a pre-tax loss of £8.5 million and being fined £2.15 million after pleading guilty to thirteen environmental offences committed across Devon and Cornwall. CEO Susan Davy said the company, which also owns Bristol Water, had “delivered improvements in environmental performance”

EXETER CITY COUNCIL member’s allowances and expenses came to a total of £409,000 in the year to March 2023, with council leader Phil Bialyk claiming £28,400 and receiving gifts and hospitality at Sandy Park stadium.

The city council has agreed to allow four music concerts at SANDY PARK STADIUM in June with up to 15,000 people in attendance, tickets for which have already been on sale for two months. Its planning committee heard accounts of extreme anti-social behaviour by visitors attending events at the venue as well as other adverse impacts on local residents and imposed traffic and parking, noise, litter and opening and closing time restrictions on the concerts.

An Ofsted monitoring report on DEVON COUNTY COUNCIL CHILDREN’S SERVICES, the fifth since the local authority was judged inadequate in January 2020, has found that the “quality of social work practice across Devon remains inconsistent”. Inspectors found “pockets of better practice” and “some positive changes” but said that weak management oversight, insufficient challenge and poor care planning all continue to cause problems. It also said a high turnover rate in agency social work staff, who make up more than 40% of the workforce, is having an adverse impact.

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On the agenda

EXETER CITY COUNCIL is inviting reactions to its proposed amendments to its existing planning policy restrictions on the conversion of residential housing to multiple occupancy dwellings, frequently lived by students, near the university. There are exhibitions from 1-7pm on Wednesday 7 June at Exeter Guildhall, 1.30-7pm on Tuesday 13 June at Newtown Community Centre in Belmont Park and 1-7pm on Tuesday 20 June at St James Church Hall in Mount Pleasant Road. Printed copies of its plans will also be available at the Civic Centre and in libraries until the consultation concludes on 3 July.

A public consultation on a draft DEVON, CORNWALL AND ISLES OF SCILLY CLIMATE ADAPTATION STRATEGY which will attempt to minimise the impact of climate change on the South West peninsula is under way until 30 June. The full draft strategy is here. Publication of a revised, final version of the plan is expected in August before partnership organisations will be invited to endorse it during the autumn, four and a half years after Devon County Council convened the Devon Climate Emergency Response Group to “act now to tackle [the] climate emergency”.

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