Extract from Save Exmouth Seafront facebook page:

This evening (Dec 16th) a number of SES supporters (abt 30 of us) went to EDDC’s Full Council meeting.

Following a demo outside, five questions were asked of the council on the plans, and Richard Cohen, EDDC Deputy Chief Executive answered these. A precis of his responses is in brackets.

First question was the need for the release of plans into the public domain (answer: apparently there are not yet any to release).

Second question was about the need to take seriously the findings of the seafront survey (recognised a ‘range of views’ but no commitment to act on the findings beyond making them available to developers).

The third question was about how the EDDC portion of the consultation was totally misleading to the students who were at the consultation and in the use of this exercise as justification for the plans (very little to say in answer to this, except that others had been consulted too).

The fourth question was about the issue of the earlier consultation stating ‘no permanent residential’ and yet plans shown over the summer included a large amount of residential therefore further consultation should be undertaken (dismissal that these plans were simply ‘one version’ and patronising comment that people have ‘extrapolated from this’, [I suggest that this is what will happen when you do not tell people what you intend to do to their town], and

finally a question was asked about whose responsibility it will be to clear sand from any development given the large amounts blown across the Queen’s Drive in the recent bad weather (after a moment looking slightly panicked, he answered that this is what will happen on a seafront!).

Further questions were then asked by a number of independent councillors around the proposed development, the need for a consultation, and the secrecy around meetings that are held on this. Unfortunately the answers given were lacking, and the public at one point had to be asked to be quiet as we felt the need to express our general outrage that important questions about the future of Exmouth were not being addressed. The lack of democracy this evening was pretty depressing.

Earlier EDW post on the same meeting here: https://eastdevonwatch.org/2015/12/17/as-a-young-person-of-exmouth-i-feel-misled-and-horrified/