Independent, investigative, in the public interest  Upgrade to paid

THE EXETER DIGEST

Exeter Digest #37: Exeter City Living special report

Our latest edition also includes curated culture events and an invitation to help us grow.

SPECIAL REPORT

Exeter City Living to be all-but wound up after £4.5 million losses with £10 million owed to council

Exeter City Living, the city council’s subsidiary property development company, is to be all-but wound up after making cumulative losses of more than £4.5 million. It still owes the council more than £10 million against loans intended to deliver hundreds of new homes on sites including Clifton Hill sports centre.

The council intends to acquire the company’s assets by releasing the company from its loan obligations, leaving it to settle the company’s loan liabilities when its creditors are repaid. But it expects the resulting resale value of the surrendered Clifton Hill development site not to cover the company’s debts, with the remaining losses to be written off.

In this special report we examine the company’s financial and development delivery history, the council’s decision-making about the company and the position in which the company’s failure has left the council.

We look at council decisions to loan the company up to £44 million to finance construction and also spend £46.3 million buying the resulting housing, underwriting the company at both ends after failing to change course when new local government borrowing rules rendered the company redundant just ten weeks after it was set up.

We consider the council’s claims about the causes of the company’s failure, explore the findings of an independent review into what happened, and ask what the consequences might be for the council’s Liveable Exeter development scheme, the new Exeter Local Plan and the council’s ability to protect the city’s greenbelt.

We also ask who is responsible and who should be held responsible for the serial performance, governance and viability failings around Exeter City Living that have jeopardised the council’s finances just when it has to cut another £5 million from its budget.

Read the full report here.

Subscribe to The Exeter Digest - Exeter Observer's essential free email newsletter

Your personal information will be processed and stored in accordance with our Privacy Policy

HELP US GROW

New leaflets to promote Exeter Observer to new readers have just arrived from the printer.

Let us know if you’d like some to share with your friends and we’ll pop them in the post.

If you’d like to distribute a bigger bundle door to door, to help us reach a wider audience, let us know how many you might be able to drop off and we’ll suggest some streets we’d like to leaflet.

ON OUR RADAR

Squeeze Box // Maketank

An immersive installation for and about the disabled experience. To Saturday 7 October. More details here.

Food on Film autumn season // Exeter Phoenix

The programme exploring our relationship with food continues with documentary and narrative film screenings and a visit to Exeter Growers Co-operative. Tuesday 10 to Sunday 22 October. More details here.

Spork! Dead Poets Slam // Exeter Phoenix

An October spoken-word poetry special featuring poet and slam champion Rick Dove. Sunday 29 October. More details here.

MISSED EXETER DIGEST #36?

Read it on our website where you can sign up to support our independent local public interest journalism from £8.50 per month.

Independent, investigative, in the public interest

Exeter Observer publishes the independent investigative journalism our local democracy needs.

It can do this because it is the city's only news organisation that doesn't have to answer to corporate advertisers, remote shareholders or those in power.

Instead, its not-for-profit public interest business model is simple.

It depends on readers like you to sustain our reporting by contributing a small amount each month.

Lots of people currently chip in like this, but it's not enough to cover our costs. We need more paying subscribers to keep publishing.

135 of the 300 readers we need have signed up so far. Help us reach our goal by joining them today.

Support our work from less than £2/week and get access to exclusive premium content and more.

Upgrade to paid

More stories
Proposed revised Mary Arches Bartholomew Street East co-living block elevation

Mary Arches “co-living” developer resists “miniscule” room size criticisms as design revisions prompt further consultation

Changes include increased building footprints and removal of twelve rooms to provide eleven communal kitchens – between residents of 297 studios – while gates obstruct pedestrian thoroughfare and site’s historic setting and significance essentially ignored.

September 2025 permitted replacement scheme west elevation

Council denies data and contrives criteria to dismiss community balance concerns in third King Billy student block approval

Exeter Observer analysis finds more students living in city centre than residents as council bid to include PBSA in housing delivery figures weakens local planning policy – but does not remove it from decision-making altogether.

, updated

Grace Road Fields in March

Botched consultation restarted on sale of 8.5 acres of Riverside Valley Park green space

Council land disposal to include rights to lay underground distribution pipework across River Exe floodplain following “low-to-zero carbon” Grace Road Fields heat plant planning approval in face of Environment Agency sequential test concerns.

Exeter College and Petroc campuses map

Exeter College and Petroc merger set to create largest college group in South West

Colleges hold public consultation on creation of new organisation which they say would educate 16,000 students at Exeter and North Devon campuses and employ 2,000 staff with £100 million turnover.

Proposed Clarendon House student block aerial view

Proposals to replace Clarendon House with 297-bed student accommodation complex submitted for approval

Developer Zinc Real Estate arrives at final proposal for up to ten storey Paris Street roundabout redevelopment after nearly two years of informal public consultations and meetings with city councillors and officers.

On Our Radar
Play Interact Explore installation

SATURDAY 4 OCTOBER TO SUNDAY 2 NOVEMBER 2025

Play Interact Explore

Theatre Alibi hosts an interactive exhibition suitable for all ages created by artists Leap then Look.

EMMANUEL HALL

Still from How the Little Mole Got His Trousers

SATURDAY 18 OCTOBER 2025

Nature’s Resources

A programme of six short animated films explores the relationship between humans and non-human species.

EXETER PHOENIX

Jo Eades

FRIDAY 31 OCTOBER 2025

Spork! Dead Poets Slam 2025

Halloween spoken-word special featuring Jo Eades and Samuel L. Cohen with a £100 cash prize poetry slam.

EXETER PHOENIX