The café shrinks and about 160 sqm goes from the new extension: Exeter's £6m Wonford hub is redesigned to fit its budget. Comments close 27 September.
Exeter City Council has applied to build a smaller version of the Wonford Community Wellbeing Hub than the one it won permission for last year. The new extension loses about 160 square metres, and the café is set back and reduced.
The application is 26/1216/VOC. It was received and validated on 12 August 2026, and it asks to vary condition 2 of the permission granted in February 2025 so that new drawings supersede the approved ones. (Exeter City Council, application 26/1216/VOC)
The reason is set out in the applicant’s own cover letter, dated 14 July 2026. The architects, Space&Place of Haymarket in London, write that the amendments were “developed to align with updated project requirements and budget”, and that the changes “support the deliverability of the scheme”. (Cover letter R00, application 26/1216/VOC)
What is being taken out
The cover letter lists the changes. The ones a visitor would notice are these.
- The building footprint is reduced, cutting about 160 sqm from the gross internal area of the new extension. The hub is set back and the café area is smaller.
- Glazing is cut back on three elevations. The north façade gets shorter glazing, the east elevation is redesigned, and the south elevation loses curtain walling height and gains spandrel panels.
- Rooflights above the foyer and sun tunnels above the internal circulation area are dropped.
- The refuse store moves out of the building and becomes a standalone structure clad in metal louvres.
- The landscape layout is amended to suit the smaller building, with the lawn in front of the café extended.
Some of the work goes the other way. Internal partitions come out of the Community Hall to create a new corridor linking it to the new build. In the Sports Hall, partitions are reconfigured to create a sport wheelchair store, a kitchen store and a staff room, and sections of brickwork and glazing are removed so the viewing gallery looks directly into the hall.
The letter says the sustainability principles are kept, including the improved building envelope and the thermal separation between old and new. It also says planning officers agreed the changes “do not go to the heart of the permission”, so they could come forward as a section 73 application rather than a fresh one.
How the figures compare
The council’s 2025 committee report described the approved scheme as demolishing only the mid-section of the building and rebuilding it “with an increased internal floor area of 250 sqm, compared with the existing floor area of 2246 sqm”. (Planning Committee report, 24/1396/ECC, 17 February 2025)
The cover letter puts the reduction at about 160 sqm of gross internal area in the new extension. The two figures are measured differently, so they do not simply cancel out. The council has not published a revised floor area for the whole building, and the application documents do not give one.
The £6m and where it comes from
Councillors approved the money at an Extraordinary Council meeting on 25 March 2026. The £6 million budget is made up of three parts.
- Up to £2,920,269 from the council’s Community Infrastructure Levy receipts
- Up to £1,079,731 from section 106 agreements
- The remaining £2 million from external grant funding
(Exeter City Council, funding agreed for the Wonford Community Wellbeing Hub, 25 March 2026)
The council has worked with Sport England on its Live and Move programme since 2018, and says Sport England has offered funding towards the hub’s development. The March release does not say the £2 million of external grant funding has been secured.
Councillors saw this coming
The Planning Committee granted permission on 17 February 2025, and the decision was issued on 21 February. The minutes record that members raised concerns about funding availability, and asked whether the development could be phased.
One line reads directly onto the application now in front of the council: members said “there was concern about the potential financial implications later in the process and there needed to be an allowance for design variance for later in the process”. The Strategic Director for Place told them a further design stage, RIBA stage 4, would be fully funded before the job went to tender. (Planning Committee minutes, item 16, 17 February 2025)
What the hub is meant to do
The site is the Wonford Community and Learning Centre on Burnthouse Lane, EX2 6NF. It holds a sports hall, a community hall, the Phoenix Centre youth club, disused outdoor changing rooms and an 88-space car park. Ludwell Valley Park lies to the south, with the Exeter Green Circle path running along the boundary. Lidl and a pharmacy sit to the east.
The approved scheme keeps and refurbishes the sports hall and community hall, demolishes the central block, and builds a café and hub, a gym, a studio and FA changing facilities. The 2025 committee report expected the finished building to create about half a full-time job and to help retain 6.5 existing ones.
The council describes Wonford as the most deprived ward in the city, with some of its highest levels of physical inactivity and poorest health outcomes. (Exeter City Council, latest designs revealed, 28 February 2024) The planning register records the application site itself in Priory ward.
What it means for you
If you use the centre. Nothing changes yet. The application varies the drawings for a scheme that has permission but has not started. The sports hall and community hall are retained under both versions.
If you want to comment. The consultation expiry date on the register is 27 September 2026. The case officer is Goran Molin and the determination deadline is 21 October 2026. No public comments had been logged against the application when we checked on 9 September. Comments go through the council’s own portal. (Exeter City Council, application 26/1216/VOC)
If you want to see the drawings. All 17 documents, including the revised elevations, sections and landscape plans, are free to view on the council’s related documents page for the reference. The documents tab on the planning portal itself returns a permission error, so use the council page instead.
There is no Exeter Planning Committee meeting in September. The committee scheduled for 14 September was cancelled, and the next one is on 12 October, so a decision by 21 October would be taken by officers under delegated powers. We track new applications on our Exeter planning news page.
Sources
- Exeter City Council, application 26/1216/VOC
- Application documents, including the cover letter, for 26/1216
- Exeter City Council, permission 24/1396/ECC
- Planning Committee report, 24/1396/ECC
- Planning Committee minutes, item 16, 17 February 2025
- Exeter City Council, funding agreed for the Wonford Community Wellbeing Hub
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