Local News

What the National Insurance rise will cost you

National Insurance Tax Hike

It should be the people who can afford it the most who fund our NHS and social care services. This punishing and regressive 10% tax hike will instead disproportionately hit young people, low earners and carers who are already struggling from the pandemic.

ELD
8 Sep 2021
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Clifton Hill Leisure Centre

Is the swimming pool Exeter’s Brexit?

It's become universally acknowledged that our national government has become preoccupied with Brexit. Whilst other issues - housing, education, social care - get a mention every now and again, there is little space in government to generate and enact policies in these areas due to the domination of Brexit.

ELD
26 Jan 2019
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Adrian Fullam

Labour rule has failed Exeter

As Exeter's MP steps in (Echo 1/3/18) to explain the bus station issues, it poses fundamental questions. Where is Exeter Council Leader Pete Edwards? Why do half the voters in the city choose the Labour Party to run affairs when they are so obviously failing? If people oppose austerity, why do they vote for a Labour Party whose over-riding priority for over a decade has been to build a premium swimming pool? Is this what people in hardship are asking for? If people vote for the Labour Party's vision of new facilities, do they feel let down? Even though they have spent big on a pool that the swimming club doesn't like and a smaller bus station that bus users don't like, Labour have failed to deliver any development at all and have lost both their partners for the pool and the wider development with millions of pounds of planning investment wasted. Businesses, shoppers and workers will be deterred from the city centre by the double whammy of U-turn permission for out-of-town shopping and a 13% hike in par

4 Mar 2018
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Alan Connett

The Marsh Barton ‘half hourly train service from 2018’… is running late!

Exeter's long awaited new railway station at Marsh Barton is running late.... in fact, so late it's years behind schedule with no sign of being built as costs sky rocket, says concerned local county councillor Alan Connett. Just two years ago, Devon County Council announced "The station is due to be opened in 2016. A half hourly frequency is expected to serve the station from 2018 as part of a major timetable revision…" But starved of essential Government funding and with costs to build the station rocketing from £4.3million to £13 million, Cllr Connett is concerned the station at Marsh Barton may never be built. "This delay is an example of the way the Government is starving Devon of much needed investment. This station is a vital link in the plans for Exeter's development along with new stations like Newcourt and Cranbrook," said Cllr Connett. "The Government refused vital funding for Marsh Barton earlier this year and the next round of grants is not until 2020, so that's at least two more years delay and i

AF
1 Jan 2018
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