template engine?

No and no, but there's no problem with that. Also, if you're working with a "designer" that isn't comfortable around php, a funky template language isn't going to help. You just need to work with more experienced people.

I agree with you, PHP is something you would need even designers to be comfortable with.

However, surely it is a security risk, being able to execute PHP code in a view? I think I prefer all business logic entirely separate, and I just wondered whether there was a method in Codeigniter to strip views of PHP code when a user was utilising the template parser.

I suppose I could use the NGINX config file to manage this. I really only mention it because I've been doing some work with Drupal lately and I know that their ideology is that PHP shouldn't be executed in a view.

No it's not, when the html runs PHP is not visible to the users. Do a page view when you go to any site that uses PHP.

I wasn't meaning the risk is that someone could see your PHP code, that's obviously protected server side. More that if an attacker managed to get write access to the view file, it's an easy way to execute some code or make use of $_SERVER outputs (if used), for example.

But as already mentioned by caralot, as long as everything is properly sanitised, it looks like the risk is minimal.