A new area of open green space for local people to enjoy next year has been acquired by East Devon District Council.

eastdevondistrc-newsroom.prgloo.com

This first new public space marks an important landmark in creating the Clyst Valley Regional Park, which stretches from National Trust Killerton to Clyst St Mary near the Exe Estuary. The new space is expected to open to the public in 2023, providing a wider choice for residents and visitors as an alternative to protected sites such as the East Devon Pebblebed Heaths and the Exe Estuary.

Roughly equivalent to the size of 9 rugby pitches, the land for the area has been paid for by money from developers, known as Section 106 payments and the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL), as part of their obligations when building much-needed homes for local people.  Commercial sensitivity around the sale means that the purchase price of the land is not disclosed.

Work to establish the new green space will now start. The first step is to seek planning permission for change of use of the land from agricultural to public open space.

Councillor Geoff Jung, East Devon District Council’s Portfolio Holder for Coast, Country and the Environment, said:

I am really pleased to see this open green space coming forward, which will form a part of East Devon’s Clyst Valley Regional Park. The new area will provide access into our beautiful countryside with proposals to create ponds, woodland and flower-rich meadows in a nature-rich, public green space.

The new space will be located near Broadclyst Station and is presently a series of meadows and hedgerows with a stream running through. There are some characterful old oak trees, and lovely views towards Pinhoe ridge.

Councillor Paul Arnott, East Devon District Council’s Leader and Portfolio Holder for Strategic Development, said:

This is one of the best schemes currently being run by East Devon District Council and when it is complete residents will gain quiet, sustainable travel routes from Cranbrook to Exeter without needing to get in a car at all.

We hope that local residents will appreciate a walk along the meandering stream through the middle of the site or just taking in the expansive new green space.

On behalf of East Devon District Council’s Ward Councillors for Broadclyst, Councillor Sarah Chamberlain, said:

We are really pleased to see this fantastic area of open green space come forward for the residents of Broadclyst Station and surrounding areas.

It is a great opportunity to use this area as the wonderful open countryside that it is. It enjoys many features including a very old tree that has gone almost silver in age, many fantastic views and even a stream.

We hope residents enjoy the space as a link to Exeter or just to relax and take a walk.

At a future meeting of East Devon District Council’s Cabinet there will be a discussion on the long term management of the site.

Budleigh loses a celebrated resident

Wolf Hall writer Dame Hilary Mantel has died “suddenly yet peacefully” surrounded by close family and friends aged 70, HarperCollins has announced. She was also famed for the follow-up novels Bring Up The Bodies and The Mirror and The Light.

Phil Norris www.devonlive.com 

In a statement, 4th Estate Books wrote: “We are heartbroken at the death of our beloved author, Dame Hilary Mantel, and our thoughts are with her friends and family, especially her husband, Gerald.

“This is a devastating loss and we can only be grateful she left us with such a magnificent body of work.”

Dame Hilary is best known for her epic The Wolf Hall Trilogy of which Diarmaid MacCulloch, Oxford theology professor and biographer of Thomas Cromwell said: “Hilary has reset the historical patterns through the way in which she’s reimagined the man.”

She won the Man Booker Prize twice, for Wolf Hall and its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, which also won the 2012 Costa Book of the Year. The conclusion to her ground-breaking The Wolf Hall Trilogy,

The Mirror and the Light, was published in 2020 to huge critical acclaim, an instant number one fiction best-seller and longlisted for The Booker Prize 2020 and winner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, which she first won for Wolf Hall.

Bill Hamilton, Dame Hilary’s agent at literary agency A.M. Heath, said it had been the “greatest privilege” to work with her throughout her career. He said: “Her wit, stylistic daring, creative ambition and phenomenal historical insight mark her out as one of the greatest novelists of our time.

“She will be remembered for her enormous generosity to other budding writers, her capacity to electrify a live audience, and the huge array of her journalism and criticism, producing some of the finest commentary on issues and books.

“Emails from Hilary were sprinkled with bon mots and jokes as she observed the world with relish and pounced on the lazy or absurd and nailed cruelty and prejudice.

“There was always a slight aura of otherworldliness about her, as she saw and felt things us ordinary mortals missed, but when she perceived the need for confrontation she would fearlessly go into battle.

“And all of that against the backdrop of chronic health problems, which she dealt with so stoically. We will miss her immeasurably, but as a shining light for writers and readers she leaves an extraordinary legacy. Our thoughts go out to her beloved husband Gerald, family and friends.”

As  the markets give the thumbs down with the pound plunging and the costs of government borrowing increasing……the Tories really look to be on course to crash the economy – Owl

Mini-Budget response –  Institute for Fiscal Studies

Paul Johnson, IFS Director, said

“Today, the Chancellor announced the biggest package of tax cuts in 50 years without even a semblance of an effort to make the public finance numbers add up. Instead, the plan seems to be to borrow large sums at increasingly expensive rates, put government debt on an unsustainable rising path, and hope that we get better growth. This marks such a dramatic change in the direction of economic policy-making that some of the longer-serving cabinet ministers might be worried about getting whiplash.

Mr Kwarteng has shown himself willing to gamble with fiscal sustainability in order to push through these huge tax cuts. He is willing to shrug off the risks of inflation, and to invite significantly higher interest rates. And he has avoided scrutiny by presenting a Budget in all but name without accompanying forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility.

Injecting demand into this high-inflation economy leaves the government pulling in the exact opposite direction to the Bank of England, who are likely to raise rates in response. Early signs are that the markets – who will have to lend the money required to plug the gap in the government’s fiscal plans – aren’t impressed. This is worrying. Government borrowing is set on an upward path. It will reach its third-highest peak since the war, and remain at well over £100 billion, even once the energy support package is withdrawn.

And we heard nothing on public spending. It seems almost inconceivable that plans made last year, when inflation was expected to peak around 3%, will not need topping up at some point, unless the government is willing to allow a (further) deterioration in the range and quality of public services. Presumably this government would borrow for that also. 

Mr Kwarteng is not just gambling on a new strategy, he is betting the house.”

Go to ifs.org.uk to read the full article which includes penetrating analyses of each policy announced. Here are a couple of examples:

Income tax and National Insurance contributions

…. Only those with incomes over at least £155,000 will be net beneficiaries. They gain from the abolition of the additional rate, and are unaffected by freezing the personal allowance because their incomes are too high to be eligible for one anyway. This is quite a different picture from that before the mini-Budget, which implied larger tax rises across the board, but especially so for higher earners.

Taken together, today’s measures undo much of the tax rises introduced by Johnson and Sunak, and undo all of them for the highest-income households. The losses for middle- and higher-income households from previously introduced policies will be roughly halved by today’s measures. The richest tenth of households, who were set to lose around £3,500 a year (3%) on average in 2025-26 under Johnson and Sunak’s plans, will now gain around £700 a year (1%) on average.

Investment Zones

The government intends to create new Investment Zones getting special treatment for tax, regulation and local governance. The full details, and therefore the cost, have not yet been confirmed.

Tax sites within the new Investment Zones will offer a raft of temporary business tax reliefs similar to those available in Freeports, but even more generous and for ten years rather than five. These tax breaks are likely to increase economic activity in these areas, but some of that would otherwise have happened elsewhere in the UK.

This raises the question of why it is better to have lower taxes in some parts of the country than others – encouraging people and businesses to move to the favoured areas – rather than spending the same money on (smaller) tax cuts spread evenly across the country: for example, whether it is intended to help ‘level up’ deprived areas and, if so, whether the areas and policies chosen are appropriate for that objective.

Since the tax breaks are temporary, another question is how much businesses will find it worth making long-term investments that will tie them into the area for longer than that – and, correspondingly, how much the economic benefits to favoured areas will persist after the tax breaks expire.