We need good affordable and sustainable housing we are delivering this

CLLR PHIL BIALYK IS THE LEADER OF EXETER CITY COUNCIL

I want to start by talking about Remembrance Sunday. I was very pleased and very proud that several members of the public have remarked about how much they enjoyed the service we held at the War Memorial in Northernhay Gardens.

The Salamanca band was fantastic and really, on such a sombre occasion, added a lot of cheer to the event and it made everyone who attended feel very proud.

A civic party also attended Exeter Cathedral for the Devon County service later in the afternoon and this was another very well organised and moving event.

The Devon district councils have commissioned a housing report which will form the basis of our strategic thinking in the county going forward. Here in Exeter, we still have a big challenge in order to meet the housing numbers that are not just required by government but are genuinely needed by people here in the city.

We need good affordable and sustainable housing and I am pleased that we are delivering this. We will be investing money in the long-awaited Laing’s Easiform project in the St Thomas area. This has been outstanding for a few years abut I am pleased that we can now proceed with this scheme.

We also have Vaughan Road and the first phase is near completion, with the creation of 35 new Passivhaus homes for people in housing need.

Groundworks have also been completed on the second and third phases of the development and we will now be working with government agencies to bring forward these phases.

I am involved in a lot of discussions with our county partners on devolution. The City Council has been awarded more than £2m which will help with our Council house retrofit programme, which reduces carbon emissions and lowers fuel bills for tenants.

We are currently consulting on car parks, and I am hoping to review the consultations and bring forward a report in due course. We are also consulting on how we meet our budgetary requirements for next year and beyond.

I am pleased that there is a genuinely positive emphasis on local government from the present Labour administration. However, we are fully aware that things are not going to happen overnight, and we are going to have to prepare for the future.

The consultation will start shortly and is being carried out independently by a professional research company to produce a representative sample of residents in Exeter. I hope anyone who is asked to take part chooses to do so. The consultation will also be open for everybody to take part in online.

We are committed to consulting and engaging with our residents and it is very important that we listen to what they tell us. We recently completed a Residents Survey asking people what they think about the services we run and living in Exeter generally.

The full results will be released in due course, but some headlines that stand out are that 82 per cent are satisfied with their local area as a place to live, twice as many (50%) are satisfied with the way the Council runs things compared to those dissatisfied (25%), and trust in the Council (58%) is higher than the national average figure (53%).

Finally, it was great to be at St James’s Park on Saturday to see Exeter City’s excellent win against Charlton. It was a great performance.

It was also good that Exeter Chiefs secured a high-scoring win against Hartpury in the Premiership Cup. Despite a difficult start to the Premiership season, the whole city remains behind the Chiefs and I know it won’t be long before they start to climb the table.