Exeter's great and good on new board

But talking shop has no powers

The people who will work on Exeter’s 2040 vision has been finalised - and, after a vocal campaign led by the city's Green Party councillor Diana Moore, has been made public more than a year after being formed.

The Liveable Exeter Place Board, created by the city's new leadership team after the 2019 local elections, is intended to link key opinion-formers in the city with councillors to help get their buy-in and expertise. It was initially established to help drive the Liveable Exeter Garden City programme – a plan for 12,000 homes largely on brownfield sites. The Greens, though, say it's a 'shadow council.'

Exeter's Green Party, together with three other councillors in what they call a 'Progressive Group, has been complaining for months that membership of the board is secret and feared it had undue and undemocratic influence on decision-making in the city. City council top dogs said those claims were nonsense, and that the board was advisory only; meeting to advise the council privately in ways that they otherwise wouldn't do if the people involved had to go on-the-record.

Chief executive and growth director Karime Hassan told Exeter City Council's executive this week that the covid crisis has demonstrated the value in having such a vehicle in place. He added: “The success won’t be building 12,000 homes, but delivering the community infrastructure and great neighbourhoods, that we address the congestion we see in the city, and that we deliver the net zero carbon agenda. We cannot achieve that on our own – we have to achieve it with our partners. Unless we have the coordination, then we won’t deliver the ambitious vision for the city.”

The Exeter Vision 2040 statement includes Exeter being healthy and happy, that health, care and wellbeing services will be designed and delivered in partnership with the communities who use them, and there will be high quality and accessible built environment and green spaces, with great arts and cultural facilities, will encourage healthy and active lifestyles.

A comprehensive network of safe routes will ensure that most everyday journeys are made by walking and cycling is also part of the vision, as is access to world class education and training, meaningful high-quality employment and fair wages, to attract the best global talent, keeping more money in the local economy, and being a global leader in addressing social, economic and environmental challenges of climate change and urbanisation.

The board will meet in private, although regular updates will be provided to the scrutiny and executive committees, and any decisions would be brought through the council’s existing governance systems. That had infuriated the Greens. In June, the councillor for St David's Diana Moore accepted that working with partners in the city was important, but said:  "It feels as if Labour are setting up a shadow council, within – yet beyond the reach of – the council and its elected members. And in the process forgetting the important principles of openness, transparency and accountability that underpin democracy. These principles are critical to ensure that elected representatives, and the communities they serve, can hold the Council to account and ensure they are working in the interests of residents that elected it.”

She continued: “I’ve not heard anything from this body. I’ve asked to see minutes of meetings and have been refused. It seems to me a basic courtesy, let alone a democratic right, for councillors to be told who has been appointed to the Place Board and what they are doing.”

Explaining why meetings would not be open to the public, Mr Hassan added: “The effectiveness of the place board in confronting issues that need to be addressed so as to remove obstacles to delivery requires a level of candour and confidence for leaders to confide among each other in a constructive and positive tone. It is difficult to have such conversations in a public setting, quite simply leaders will not reveal things in public that they would in a more private setting. For understandable reputational reasons trust is generally a prerequisite for frank and candid conversations.

“We have declared a climate emergency and we need to work at pace. Therefore whilst acknowledging members desire to have matters discussed in a public fashion, if the Board is to be able perform its role effectively, the Board must be allowed to work in the manner it determines appropriate.”

Cllr Phil Bialyk, leader of the council, added: “It provides a forum to discuss the challenges of the vision and how they can be overcome to realise the vision. Place board gives the leaders a chance to raise other issues which they believe require the support of others to overcome for the better of the city. This will deliver the aspirations for the city of Exeter.”

The members of Liveable Exeter Place Board are:

• Sir Steve Smith, The government’s International Education Champion and former vice chancellor of Exeter University (chairman)
• The Right Honourable Ben Bradshaw MP for Exeter (Labour)
• Simon Jupp MP for East Devon (Conservative)
• Cllr Phil Bialyk Leader, Exeter City Council
• Cllr John Hart Leader, Devon County Council
• The Right Reverend Robert Atwell, Bishop of Exeter
• Shaun Sawyer, Chief Constable, Devon & Cornwall Police
• Suzanne Tracey, Chief Executive, Royal Devon & Exeter NHS Foundation Trust
• Charles Courtenay, Earl of Devon
• Dinah Cox, Chair of Trustees, Devon Community Foundation
• John Laramy. Principal & Chief Executive, Exeter College
• Lee Elliot-Major, Professor of Social Mobility, University of Exeter
• Ian Cameron, Business Group Director, Met Office
• Claire Kennedy, Licensee and Curator, TEDxExeter
• Kalkidan Legesse, Social entrepreneur and Managing Director at Sancho’s
• Paul Crawford, Chief Executive Officer, LiveWest
• Steve Hindley, Chairman, Midas Group, and Great South West
• Glenn Woodcock, Director, Oxygen House
• Charles Johnston, Executive Director of Property, Sport England
• Tony Rowe OBE, Chief Executive & Chairman, Exeter Rugby Club
• Julian Tagg, Chairman ECFC, Chairman City Community Trust
• Sarah Crown, Director of Literature Arts Council England
• Lady Lucy Studholme, Chair of Board of Trustees, Exeter Northcott Theatre
• Mike Watson, Managing Director – Stagecoach South West
• Mike Gallop, Western Route Director, Network Rail
• Matthew Golton, Interim Managing Director, GWR
• Matt Roach, Chairman Exeter Chamber of Commerce & MD Exeter International Airport
• Karime Hassan, Chief Executive & Growth Director, Exeter City Council
• One place is being held for the University of Exeter’s new Vice-Chancellor Lisa Roberts