Everything else is public relations  Upgrade to paid

COMMENT

Council raids community fund for £6 million to pay for eight year-old food waste collection promise

Emergency decision to finance materials reclamation facility investment taken less than a week before 2024 local elections campaign officially began.

Leigh Curtis

Exeter’s Labour Party first promised the introduction of a citywide food waste collection in the run-up to the 2016 local elections, eight years ago.

Three years passed. Then in July 2019 the party announced it would be bringing forward “bold new plans” for a kerbside collection scheme that would include food waste and glass too.

Council leader Phil Bialyk said the proposal was “another example of Labour delivering for Exeter”.

The council duly approved the plans later that year, which included a budget of £1.5 million to enhance the council’s Exton Road Materials Reclamation Facility (MRF) in order to deliver the scheme.

An accompanying report confirmed that collections would not commence until 2021 at the earliest.

Exeter Labour summer 2019 campaign leaflet Exeter Labour summer 2019 campaign leaflet

Eighteen more months passed. In the run-up to the 2021 local elections Labour again announced that it was preparing to deliver on its by then five year-old promise.

However two months after the ballot the council changed course completely, scrapping its plans to introduce kerbside collections altogether. The primary reason appears to be that it hadn’t realised that the new collection vehicles that were required might be too big for Exeter’s streets.

Instead it decided to retain its existing fortnightly waste and recycling collections and bolt a weekly food waste collection on the side.

Another £2.7 million was added to the project budget, bringing the total to £4.1 million.

Exeter Citizen Autumn 2019 front cover headline Exeter Citizen Autumn 2019 front cover headline

The food waste collection service finally began in November 2021 with a round of 1,300 households in Alphington. More Alphington households were added in early 2022.

In March that year the council realised that delivering the scheme would require reconfiguration of the MRF, including the creation of food waste storage bays, which would require major investment.

Labour’s 2022 local elections manifesto nevertheless promised to continue extending food waste collections across the city, but by the end of the year just 2,000 Beacon Heath and Pinhoe addresses had been added to the rounds.

Last year service delivery expansion finally gathered pace. By February this year collections from nearly 22,000 addresses were taking place, roughly a third of the city.

But the service had hit the buffers. Josie Parkhouse admitted that no new collections would be added until a new food bay was constructed at Exton Road.

The trouble was that the council had realised, two months earlier, that it would cost rather more than it previously realised to bring the MRF up to capacity to continue expanding the service.

Nearly £4 million more, bringing the total project cost to £8 million.

Exeter Labour 2024 campaign leaflet Exeter Labour 2024 campaign leaflet

At the time it said it would finance the scheme by selling assets.

Then, just five days before this year’s local elections campaign officially began, it convened an extraordinary general meeting to instead take £6 million from the Community Infrastructure Levy fund to pay for the scheme.

The decision meant that the community fund would be nearly wiped out.

The meeting took place just one month after the council’s 2024-25 annual budget was passed without the council leader mentioning MRF investment in his budget speech.

The budget line for the required upgrade was marked as to be financed by borrowing.

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

This year’s Labour local elections manifesto says “additional collections will be rolled out when a new food bay is constructed”.

It doesn’t mention the cost, or that the community fund now sits nearly empty.

Meanwhile Labour election leaflets being distributed in Alphington lead with the line that the money represents an £8 million investment in the ward.

Everything else is public relations

Exeter Observer is owned and funded by its readers instead of remote shareholders or individuals beholden to corporate advertisers or those in power.

This means we are free to focus on local news that matters instead of reproducing content marketing clickbait, press releases or public relations spin.

It is our paying subscribers who enable us to cover stories that the people and organisations we scrutinise would rather you did not see.

We need more of our readers to contribute to our running costs so we can keep publishing our independent investigative journalism.

135 of the 300 paying subscribers we need to break even have signed up so far.

Please help us reach our goal by joining them today from less than £2/week.

Upgrade to paid

More stories
Illustrative view of proposed co-living blocks from Heavitree Road

Heavitree Road police station student accommodation and “co-living” scheme consultation extended

Developers revise application for full planning permission for 813-bed seven-block complex submitted in May as similar proposals proliferate across city centre.

Boneyard arcade games

Unique retro games arcade to create new Sidwell Street venue after long search

Boneyard arcade seeking permission to change use of empty Brighthouse retail unit after making way for “co-living” block at previous Red Lion Lane location.

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.

On Our Radar
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

Carmen with rose graphic

SATURDAY 8 & SATURDAY 22 NOVEMBER 2025

Carmen

Exeter Opera Group performs Bizet’s tale of a free-spirited woman and her passionate and destructive love affair with a soldier.

EXETER CASTLE

Exeter Philharmonic Choir

SATURDAY 8 NOVEMBER 2025

The Weather Book

Exeter Philharmonic Choir performs a new weather-inspired work plus pieces by Brahms, Poulenc and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

EXETER CATHEDRAL