Let’s see the Master Plan’

Your reporter David Beasley does the Journal readership a service by bringing news of starting to clear the decks for a 21st Century Exmouth (Journal, June 25). His list of inappropriately-used town sites needs thoughtful extension: Windsor Square, for instance.

The town council is getting to grips with the challenge through the Liaison Panel's potential for a comprehensive look at the 'opportunities' and 'threats', such as those facing Exmouth employment.

Hopefully, there will be elected members from district and county as well as town council at Liaison Panel level. This would help mitigate some of the serious inadequacies of a three-tier system which, all too often, fails to connect between tiers - never mind with the 'street'.

Private landowners prowl the town's margins, hoping we will continue to ignore Exmouth's real needs, many of which could be satisfied on land in public ownership.

I hope we have learned the lesson from, what I consider, the misuse of the Liverton 'Business Park', where planning permission was given for employment purposes, and specifically not for retail.

If we need Clinton Devon's help, it should, in my opinion, be for the re-location of specified land-users only, like a police HQ, post office sorting etc. This could be a mutually beneficial public/private partnership.

When will Exmouth people get a glimpse of Councillor Halse's 'Master Plan'? Honiton may be short of natural assets which can generate local employment - Exmouth has its own particular 'assets in waiting'. And we are not on a major trunk road or a mainline railway as Honiton is.

Does the 'Master-Plan' over-ride piecemeal 'initiatives' like:

l the present proposal for Strand facelift which would leave the town centre cut in half.

l a multi-storey carpark at the London Inn which would increase congestion and division in the town.

l leaving the transport interchange (by the station) apparently even more isolated than now?

Nic Pawson,

1 Greenacre, 5 Isca Road, Exmouth.