Exmouth seafront road will be moved soon

Work necessary before construction of watersports centre can begin

Exmouth Fun Park couldn't stay, because doing so would have held up plans for the new £3 million watersports centre, according to the senior East Devon councillor responsible for the project.

The children's play park had been a fixture on Exmouth's seafront for decades. Its loss - and the plans for the new watersports facility - has been much lamented. A campaign group, Save Exmouth Seafront, has been particularly vocal, claiming elected councillors were acting undemocratically. 

The watersports centre is phase two of the redevelopment. It goes in front of council planners in May or June. Before that, phase one, which has already been approved, means the seafront road will be moved, taking it through part of the now redundant fun park, to create a traffic-free zone in front of the proposed building. If the watersports centre gets approval, construction should begin around September. A company called Grenadier, based in Exeter, will build the centre to be run as a not-for-profit community interest company.

Public consultation on phase three - a design for other parts of the scheme, will begin later this year. The council has asked Wayne Hemingway Designs to put forward proposals. The company has previous worked on other seafront regeneration schemes, such as that in Margate.