Clifton Hill motion

All the green space may not be saved after all.

Earlier this year, the council contentiously voted to include all of the land at Clifton Hill as part of the site to be marketed for a mixed residential development.

That decision though was reversed in July as a result of the progression of Liveable Exeter Garden City – the city’s housing vision for creating around 11,500 new homes in the city over the next 20 years.

At the time, Cllr Phil Bialyk, leader of the council, said that building on the green space at the back of the former leisure centre is not necessary.

He has now put forward a motion to tonight’s full council meeting that would require council officers to bring forward a report on the implications of selling a reduced site.

His motion says: “This council supports the leader of the council in his stated intention not to sell the whole of the Clifton Hill site owned by Exeter City Council for residential development by removing from the previously agreed Clifton Hill sale site, the green space area, the Golf Driving Range and the Ski-slope.

“To facilitate this change, this council requires officers to prepare a report setting out the implication of selling such a reduced site for the consideration by the executive to be held on January 14, 2020, and thereafter by Special Council to be held on January 21, 2020.”

At the July meeting when the initial decision to reverse the sale of the green space took place, Cllr Bialyk said that the Liveable Exeter Garden City proposals: “Allows us to say we do not need to build on the Northbrook golf course site and we do not need to build on the parts of the Clifton Hill site that is currently the golf range and the ski slope. We can preserve the green space at the back.

“We have to build out the front part of Clifton Hill on the sports centre site and we will come back when we have a planning proposal for the site. The easy way would have been to sell it all, but this is the difficult route and while we can celebrate we are not building on Northbrook and some of Clifton Hill site.

“I have made this statement that we won’t be selling the green space. I won’t renege on it and it would be political suicide if I did.

“My intention is that we will not develop anything beyond the brownfield site of the Clifton Hill sports centre. We need to develop out the front and get the much needed housing and there is no intention to build student flats.

“The ski slope and driving range have leases with the council on our land and these will continue for the length of their term, but I am not proposing to do anything with them. There is no need to do anything on the site as Liveable Exeter has come forward. I have no intention of doing anything or selling the land. You can keep the recording and then playback if I don’t do it.”