Exeter Unitary scrapped
As promised by David Cameron, the new Liberal Conservative Government has halted plans to make Exeter City a Unitary authority.
The Labour move was opposed by Devon County Council and was previously rejected on grounds of cost. There were also suspicions that the proposal was designed to increase the number of Labour Councillors in Devon.
The Conservatives considered that a unitary Exeter would suck wealth from the County leaving rural areas poorer.
Simultaneously, the plan to move Devon’s emergency fire callout service to Taunton has been quashed, despite the money already spent on a new building in Somerset.
Clearly, the Tories and Lib Dems mean to stick to their localism agenda. We can expect other services to be “repatriated” to Devon and Cornwall in the months ahead.
