Planning permission to rebuild the ROYAL CLARENCE HOTEL as residential flats with ground floor commercial units has still not been granted nearly ten 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. Nor was a further extended deadline of 14 July. Another deadline has now been set for 25 August, six years and ten months after the hotel burnt down.
GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY plans to shut all its ticket offices by the end of next year, including those at Exeter Central and Exeter St David’s, have received a near-universally hostile reception. Despite belatedly extending a consultation on the closures from three to eight weeks, the company apparently remains unconcerned for the future of in-person ticket sales. Its own figures show that 45% of sales at Barnstaple, 41% at Paignton and 34% at Dawlish are made this way. At Exeter Central the figure is 18% and at Exeter St David’s 12%, which is still higher than many other major GWR stations including Bristol and Oxford.
Councillors are threatening to “empty chair” STAGECOACH SOUTH WEST managing director Peter Knight after his absence from yet another meeting of the committee that oversees Exeter’s highways. Led by Labour’s Martin Pearce, they stressed the importance of a direct link between the bus operator and elected members. A county council officer fanned the flames by explaining that Mr Knight now regularly attends the county’s new bus users and stakeholders forum – which meets in secret – leading councillors to demand wider access to that body in the interests of accountability and transparency. The issue will be referred to the October meeting of the council’s DevonBus Enhanced Partnership Board.
EXETER CHIEFS rugby club has applied for permission to hold six large concerts with up to 15,500 attendees at weekends and an unlimited number of other events with up to 5,000 attendees between May and the third week of July every year. Its application relies on noise and transport impact surveys performed at four trial concerts held in June despite each being attended by well under a quarter of the intended audiences of 15,000.
DEVON & CORNWALL POLICE chief constable Will Kerr has been suspended by Police and Crime Commissioner Alison Hernandez following misconduct allegations eight months after he was appointed to lead the force, which was placed under enhanced inspectorate monitoring by the police inspectorate last year. The Independent Office for Police Conduct will now investigate.
The city council is expected to grant the UNIVERSITY OF EXETER planning permission for a six acre 1.07MWp solar farm and substation on publicly-accessible greenspace in Duryard Valley Park despite its visual and landscape harm at the 31 July meeting of its planning committee. The university owns the development site, which is a designated a Site of Nature Conservation Importance and County Wildlife Site.
The city council’s decision to refuse an application to demolish a HOWELL ROAD garage to construct a 26-bedroom purpose built student accommodation block on the site is being appealed by the developer, who has recently also applied to build a block of nine flats on the site.
A two month public consultation on the 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 only received just over 200 responses from the 1.75 million people who live in the region. 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”.
Liberal Democrat Tiverton & Honiton MP Richard Foord has announced he will stand against Conservative East Devon MP Simon Jupp in the new HONITON & SIDMOUTH seat at the next general election. Major boundary changes mean both Tiverton & Honiton and East Devon constituencies are being scrapped. A new Exmouth and East Exeter seat is also being created, where David Reed will stand for the Conservatives.
Devon County Council has postponed its plans to increase the speed limit along the length of EXWICK ROAD from Redhills to Station Road, and to extend the increase along St Andrew’s Road, after admitting that public consultation responses to its plans had gone missing. The council is justifying the changes, which would also introduce new on-road parking restrictions, on the grounds they would improve road safety and reduce congestion.
Climate activists staged the first of what they say will be weekly protests outside the Clifton Hill constituency office of EXETER MP BEN BRADSHAW on 21 July. They criticised the Labour Party’s failure to adequately respond to repeated calls from young people for rapid decarbonisation, a just transition to a low emissions economy and investment in green jobs, and demanded bolder climate commitments from the party ahead of the next general election.
A 48 hour strike by consultants at the ROYAL DEVON NHS TRUST is being held from 7am on Thursday 20 July. Planned care work will be affected, with service reduced to “Christmas day” levels. NHS advice is to attend planned appointments as normal unless you have been informed otherwise. Emergency and urgent, critical, neonatal, maternity and trauma care remain available throughout the strike.
A joint city and county council bid for government funding to replace MALLISON BRIDGE at Exeter Quay, which was closed five years ago before being removed, has failed. Pedestrians and cyclists crossing Cricklepit Bridge are instead expected to continue sharing a narrow alleyway off Commercial Road for the foreseeable future.
The county council has confirmed that it intends to introduce its EXETER LOCAL CYCLING & WALKING INFRASTRUCTURE PLAN, now six years late, without committing to delivery timescales, allocating any funding or expanding the proposed network in response to opposition to its plans centred on their lack of ambition. It also rejected calls to extend a 20mph speed limit across Exeter to increase cyclist and pedestrian safety.
HEAVITREE AND WHIPTON ACTIVE STREETS scheme exhibitions are being held from 4-7pm on Tuesday 25 July at Park Life Heavitree and on Wednesday 26 July at Whipton Community Hall. The 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.
Devon County Council is consulting until 14 August on proposals to convert a short stretch of cycle lane in NEW NORTH ROAD alongside John Lewis into a bus and cycle lane to reduce bus journey times. The new bus gate, part of the Devon Bus Service Improvement Plan, would enable around 200 buses a day to avoid travelling via Longbrook Street and York Road to reach the bus station and would also allow them to stop on Sidwell Street.
Nicola Wheeler, currently Head of Community Programmes at Peabody, will become the new CEO of INEXETER, Exeter’s business improvement district company, in October. The company charges a 1.25% business rates levy on around 750 eligible organisations operating inside defined geographic boundaries which it primarily uses for promotional activities and events.
Exeter-based South West shared mobility provider CO CARS, which is also responsible for CO BIKES e-bike hire, ceased trading on 14 July. It says the suspension of its services for long periods during the pandemic, changes in travel habits and the cost of living crisis have combined with high fuel and energy costs and supply chain issues to force the company into administration. Buyers for all or part of the business will now be sought.
Another application to convert outbuildings and a garage to a three-bedroom house at Fernleigh Nurseries in the heart of LUDWELL VALLEY PARK has been submitted to the city council despite similar previous applications being twice rejected and dismissed at appeal.
A contractor has applied on behalf of the city council for permission to rebuild and reinforce a section of ANCIENT CITY WALL on Bartholomew Street East beside the City Gate Hotel that collapsed in 2019.
Devon County Council is holding a second consultation until 26 July on proposals it says will “improve facilities for active travel” in ALPHINGTON VILLAGE between the Alphin Brook roundabout and the double mini roundabout at the Shillingford Road turn. It follows another consultation that ended in January last year on similar “enhancements” which it claims will mitigate the impact of traffic from 2,500 new homes planned as part of the South West Exeter extension.
