Exeter City Council has restarted its botched public consultation on the disposal of up to 8.5 acres of public green space in Riverside Valley Park to enable the construction of a “low-to-zero carbon” industrial heat plant for which it granted outline planning approval in August.
The council initially agreed the sale of a 2.5 acre plot in Grace Road Fields, a fifteen acre ex-playing field in the valley park, to Exeter Energy, a Leeds-based company controlled by 1Energy Group and Asper Investment Management, at a private meeting held in July last year.
The company intends to construct a privately-run network to serve institutional customers with heat via underground pipes. It has made a series of contradictory claims about the network’s generation plant heat sources since it began promoting the scheme early last year.
The plans for the plant in Grace Road Fields, which include five gas boilers providing more than 80% of its generation capacity, were approved in August after council development director Ian Collinson incorrectly told planning committee members that it was clear from the advice of the Environment Agency that they had passed the sequential test.
This test is intended to ensure that development is directed away from areas at high risk of flooding including the River Exe valley floodplain in which Grace Road Fields sits, in flood zone three.
As the land is part of Riverside Valley Park the council is required by law to hold a public consultation on its disposal and must consider any objections to the proposed disposal which may be made before re-affirming the decision to sell.
Grace Road Fields in March
The council quietly opened a consultation on the disposal on 28 November last year, which ended on new year’s eve. It was accompanied by scant materials which failed to mention that Grace Road Fields is part of Riverside Valley Park, but did include a promotional leaflet provided by Exeter Energy.
The council, which didn’t promote the consultation until three weeks after it began, said the results would be “presented to Executive prior to any exchange on the disposal of the site”. They have yet to appear. Exeter Energy said it expected to begin construction in “early 2025”, apparently confident that, no matter what the consultation response, the council would immediately ratify the sale.
But public opposition to the plans grew, partly because Exeter Energy either would or could not provide evidence to support many of its claims and partly because its claims kept changing.
Suspicions that due process had been discarded were then apparently confirmed when works began at Belle Isle park to lay the first section of the 13-mile underground distribution network in April, four months before the planning committee met in August to decide whether to approve the plans to build the plant on the other side of the river.
No-one who witnessed the meeting was left in any doubt that the council was determined to get the scheme built by hook or by crook.
Exeter Energy network River Valley Park proposed easements plan. Source: Exeter City Council.
The council then opened a second consultation on the land disposal on 1 September, again almost imperceptibly.
The size of the plot had more than tripled since the original decision to agree a sale and the disposal was now to include rights to lay underground distribution pipework across the River Exe floodplain and alongside Exeter Ship Canal.
The consultation did not comply with the council’s own consultation charter or its policy on the disposal of public open space.
It did not explain how and why the council had concluded that Riverside Valley Park was the best location for the plant or why its presumption against the disposal of public open space for private use did not apply.
It did not explain what the implications of granting the easement rights it referred to might be and it did not set out the “key objectives and targets” for the disposal stipulated in government guidance.
It was also to run for just seventeen days – not the required six weeks – and the council did next to nothing to promote it. It did not even appear on the council consultation and engagement web page.
Newtown & St Leonard’s councillor Lynn Wetenhall complained, prompting the council to pull the consultation from its website a week after it had begun, on 8 September. The council then reinstated the page after adding a heading which bizarrely said: “This consultation closed in December 2024”.
Referring to auditor criticism of the council’s public consultation methods which followed a corporate governance audit conducted in March last year – but not published until November – Lynn Wetenhall said: “The council was formally warned about poor standards of consultation last November and committed to improvements.”
She added: “The failings in this important consultation shows there is much progress still to be made.”
Exeter Energy heat plant indicative render north elevation. Source: Exeter City Council.
The council restarted the consultation just over a fortnight later, on 24 September, after adding a “background” section and removing the rogue December heading. It has published fifteen news stories on its website in the eleven days since, but none mention that the consultation is underway.
More promotional materials provided by Exeter Energy have been added and the page still links to the company’s website, which continues to present outdated and unsubstantiated claims about the plant’s heat sources and the network’s purported benefits for which there is no evidence.
The council is making much of its decision to propose granting a leasehold of at least 150 years to the company – it could be much longer, the term has not been decided – instead of selling it a freehold.
But it is still not explaining how and why it has concluded that Riverside Valley Park is the best location for the plant or why its presumption against disposal of public open space for private use does not apply.
There is also no mention of the Flood Risk Activities Permits that Exeter Energy would require from the Environment Agency before installing pipework anywhere in the River Exe floodplain, within eight metres of any flood defeneces or riverbanks, or within the river channel itself.
The easement rights included in the disposal pass straight across the valley floor. They cross a designated migratory route for European eels, a critically-endangered species protected by law.
They also cut straight across Bromham’s Farm playing fields, threatening to destroy the grass surface which is being re-established for sporting use, and along the canal towpath, an ancient historial route, instead of via a planned service route between Clapperbrook Lane and Water Lane.
Comments on the proposed disposal of land and easement rights can be submitted in writing, either via email to estates@exeter.gov.uk, by completing an online form or by post to Head of Commercial Assets, Exeter City Council, Paris Street EX1 1JN. The consultation closes on Thursday 6 November.
