They agreed the "Local Plan" last year, but who's "they" and how "local" is it actually? One Penwith professional questioned the numbers bandied about by councillors and produced by planners and developers for Cornwall. Heamoor professional, S. Reynolds, tried to understand the planners' push for last year's plan to build 52,500 additional houses, but couldn't! His letter to the West Briton: Local need figures don't mirror those in Local Plan Many people in the county are very worried about the level of overdevelopment envisaged in the Local Plan. In the West Briton of March 16 cabinet member for housing Joyce Duffin claims the Local Plan is designed to provide "high-quality housing for families in Cornwall" and that the plan puts local needs first, but the figures don't back her up. The plan calls for 52,500 homes by 2030. Based on the council's estimate of 2.1 residents per household, that means an extra 110,000 people: in other words, the equivalent of building six more Penzances in the county in 13 years. That's far more than is required to meet local need; Cornwall's natural population growth rate (excluding inward migration) is actually stable (-0.4%), according to the Office for National Statistics. Substantial inward migration would be needed to fill all these new properties. Take my new home town, Penzance, for instance. A report produced for the council in March 2016 forecasts natural population growth of just 438 people by 2030, so the local housing need is for just over 200 homes - yet the Local Plan target is for 2,150 new homes in Penzance/Newlyn by 2030. Who exactly are all these new homes for? People understand that this level of development cannot be sustained by the local employment market or infrastructure (schools, hospitals, roads, social care). The Local Plan is not about local need. Big landowners and their developers will make a quick profit and disappear, while local residents are left with the long-term legacy of extra traffic, noise, air pollution and flooding. In light of these figures, the Cornish people should insist that Joyce Duffin explains to the West Briton where the 52,500 new homes figure comes from, and how she justifies it by reference to "local need". Stephen Reynolds, ACA, Heamoor