The future of three of Devon’s Children’s homes- including one at the centre of a sexual abuse investigation- are in doubt as the council reviews its care of vulnerable children.
The Birchen Road home in Tiverton currently closed after concerns were raised about the potential sexual exploitation of residents outside the home and the placements to the Rifford Road home in Exeter suspended due to a critical Ofsted report.
Blossom Corner in Exeter, the councils third children’s home has been rated good by Ofsted but it currently has only three young people living there despite...
A programme of works to repair the B3193 in the Teign Valley near Chudleigh will begin early 2014 with the first road closure planned for Monday 13th January.
The closure will be for 5 days until Friday 17th January from 9:00am to 3:30pm.
The B3193 at Whetcombe Barton sustained major damage during last year’s flooding events as the county was left with an £18 million repair bill to its highway network.
Since August 2012, temporary traffic lights have been in place on the road, reducing it to one lane in order to protect the edge of this section of road, which has...
Devon County Council is re-organising the on-street parking service to reduce the costs of enforcement.
The County Council has been reviewing the structure of its Civil Parking Enforcement (CPE) over the past year in order to reduce the operating deficit in this part of the service.
Since the introduction of the CPE service, the District Councils have provided on-street enforcement under agreement with the County Council. A review of the service showed that significant costs savings could be made by re-organising the way the service is provided. As a result, notice was...
Members of a scheme to tackle rising energy prices have saved a staggering £23,000 off the cost of their domestic heating oil, this year.
Devon County Council says it’s a great example of communities working together to get a better deal on their heating bills.
The Devon Oil Collective works on the principle of buying heating oil in bulk through consolidating its members’ orders and placing them monthly through a dedicated broker who negotiates the best possible price on their behalf.
Typically members are obtaining oil prices 4.67 pence per litre cheaper than the...
Preparatory work is due to start in January to widen Bridge Road in Exeter, in an attempt to improve traffic flow in and out of the city.
Bridge Road is currently a traffic congestion hotspot, suffering from tailbacks which block the Countess Wear junction and its approach routes.
Devon County Council is planning to widen Bridge Road to provide two continuous outbound lanes from Countess Wear to the Matford roundabout in order to tackle queuing and reduce journey times for all traffic, while at the same time improving pedestrian and cycle facilities.
A re-routed section of the South West Coast Path at Seaton was officially opened on Thursday 19th December.
The original route of the path was damaged in the landslip at Old Beer Road during storms in July 2012. The road has been permanently closed after a geotechnical review found that there was a high risk of further failure and the coastpath was diverted.
A permissive path has been developed on land made available with the kind agreement of Clinton Devon Estates through its woodland between the B3174 Beer Road and Old Beer Road. To acknowledge its help, the route is...
Teignbridge businesses could be in line for an EU funding boost after parts of the district were included in a draft map for Assisted Area Status.
Five Teignbridge wards covering parts of Newton Abbot, Ipplepen, Coffinswell and Kingskerswell have been included in the Assisted Area Status Map (AAS) that will cover the next European Union funding period from 2014 to 2020.
Assisted Area Status permits the granting of additional financial support to small businesses and large enterprises in economically disadvantaged locations.
Independent schools could be held to a higher standard of education by regulator Ofsted from next September onwards.
In new plans unveiled today ‘good’ will become the only acceptable standard for independent schools inspected by Ofsted.
Currently, the Ofsted framework for schools has the judgements, outstanding, good, adequate and inadequate. This consultation now seeks views on changing the ‘adequate’ grade to ‘requires improvement.’
This grade will signify that even though a school may be meeting all the independent school standards, this is the minimum...
Local councils will see their budgets reduced even further in the latest round of austerity cuts.
Eric Pickles, Local Government secretary announced that most local authorities could see their spending power reduced by nearly 3%.
The reduction in spending power- calculated to include council tax and Westminster grants- is estimated to total more than £1.7bn across all UK local authorities.
Exeter City Council will lose 3.5% of its spending power next year and a further 4.1% the following year. Responding to the announcement Council Leader Pete Edwards, said: "We are...
