Exeter City Council has confirmed, in response to a freedom of information request, that it has never taken enforcement action against breaches of the ARTICLE 4 DIRECTION that is intended to prevent conversion of residential housing to HMOs in the St James area. It has also confirmed that it approved nine of fifteen applications for HMO conversion that have been made in the Article 4 direction area since it was introduced in January 2012.
MATFORD BROOK ACADEMY, a new “state of the art” Ted Wragg Trust school for 1,450 pupils of all ages intended to serve the South West Exeter extension, is now not expected to open in September because of problems with the building foundations.
A new EXMOUTH AND EAST EXETER parliamentary constituency will replace most of the current East Devon seat held by MP Simon Jupp. The changes will reduce the Exeter constituency’s size, moving its current eastern boundary westwards so all of the city’s Pinhoe, St Loye’s and Topsham council wards will fall in the new seat. Nearly 9,000 Exeter voters are affected. Simon Jupp will contest the new Honiton and Sidmouth seat that will also be created as part of the changes, which the government is expected to approve in the next four months.
A £6.4 million government grant for heat decarbonisation at RAMM and the RIVERSIDE LEISURE CENTRE is to be spent on a Riverside roof upgrade and the replacement of gas-fired boilers with air source heat pump systems at both buildings.
The £16 million MARSH BARTON railway station is to open on 4 July, six and half years later than planned.
A £190,000 HEAVITREE AND WHIPTON ACTIVE STREETS scheme trial will begin in August for up to eighteen months, the first six of which will be a statutory consultation period during which residents and organisations will be invited to comment on the scheme. Four modal filters and three bus gates will initially be employed with the aim of reducing vehicular neighbourhood through traffic and increasing active travel in the area, in which around 17,000 people live. Changes based on consultation responses may be made to the scheme layout during the trial, in which case a further six month statutory consultation begins.
City council planning committee chair Paul Knott used his casting vote to approve final plans for the 50,000m2 UNIVERSITY OF EXETER West Park redevelopment of its Clydesdale, Nash and Birks Grange Village student accommodation sites on the north west corner of Streatham campus. It will involve demolishing 30 buildings to provide more than 2,000 new student bedrooms, a net increase of nearly 1,500 on the current site provision, and will be ten times the size of the St Sidwell’s Point leisure centre. Furious local residents who say they have been stone-walled by the university during the three-year planning process were dismayed at the decision.
The same planning committee meeting also granted Exeter Golf and Country Club permission to use 17 acres of privately-owned land that is part of LUDWELL VALLEY PARK as a golf driving range to replace their existing range on the other side of Rydon Lane, which will be developed for housing. A building and car park will be constructed on the greenfield site, which will remain inaccessible to the public, and conditions will restrict its use.
Planning permission to rebuild the ROYAL CLARENCE HOTEL as residential flats with ground floor commercial units has still not been granted more than eight months after the city council approved the plans. An extended 26 May deadline to sign a s106 legal agreement requiring developer contributions to health, education and affordable housing elsewhere in the city was not met. An extended deadline for its completion has now been set at 14 July, six years and nine months after the hotel burnt down.
EXETER CITY FUTURES is to be dissolved at the end of June following the final event in its £250,000 National Lottery-funded community engagement programme. The eight-year-old company, on which the city council has spent nearly £500,000, is responsible for the redundant Net Zero Exeter 2030 plan.
A special meeting of Exeter Highways and Traffic Orders Committee (HaTOC) is being held at County Hall on Tuesday 20 June to discuss the HEAVITREE AND WHIPTON ACTIVE STREETS trial scheme following two public consultations and extensive community engagement. The scheme proposes modal filters and bus gates aimed at reducing vehicular neighbourhood through traffic and increasing active travel in the area, in which around 17,000 people live. An online petition encouraging councillors to approve the proposals is being hosted on the county council website.
Proposals to vary a planning permission granted ten years ago to redevelop buildings on the corner of FORE STREET and WEST STREET that currently house Langans and Crankhouse Coffee to create a six storey block of thirteen flats with commercial units on the ground floor have been submitted to the city council for approval.
The city council has granted planning permission for PINHOE COMMUNITY HUB, a new building at Station Road playing fields, for the second time following the lapse of the previous permission that was granted in February 2020.
EXETER CITY LIVING is holding a public consultation on its Glasshouse Lane redevelopment plans, which have been revised following public feedback. The council-owned company is now proposing 24 housing units in a single four storey block on the south side of the site.
Exeter Estates Holdings, a property development company that is controlled by Tony Rowe, CEO and chairman of Exeter Chiefs, has withdrawn its application to demolish ST THOMAS LIBARY and replace it with a block of thirteen flats following a public outcry in reaction to the plans.
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”.
