Tregenna Development in Camborne receives a stay of execution despite Mark Broomhead and Phil Mason’s best efforts for the developers.

Another classic case of unelected public servants at Cornwall Council, this time Mr Mark Broomhead, pushing and scaring elected councillors into doing a U-turn on planning decisions.

Whilst Cornwall slowly but surely sinks into sewage (quite literally!), with rising levels of Hepatitis E and other nasty infections hitting water courses and bays at Hayle, Padstow, Newquay, Falmouth, Par, Fowey, Porthtowan and other villages, and SWW becomes completely overwhelmed by its own creaking and leaking sewerage infrastructure network, which is now unable to cope, planners keep playing the develpers’ fiddle by coercing councillors into accepting dangerously high and unsustainable planning applications, or at best deferring them under pressure from a few rightly incensed councillors.

This after the then Chief Executive, Andrew Kerr, and successive Council Leaders, John Pollard (Hayle, ironically) and Adam Paynter (Wadebridge), promised us that once we had a Local Plan in place, the free-for-all cowboy developers such as Persimmon, Wain Homes and others would be better controlled in their totally unsuitable mass second/landlord homes planning applications.

Now despite the human and social catastrophe facing us, it would seem that the Local Plan has achieved absolutely nothing; so either they and Chief Planner, Phil Mason, lied, or they are completely inept and lacking in understanding of the planning system, and therefore shouldn’t be commanding 6-figure public wages to “serve” us.

www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/drainage-saga-drags-over-controversial-4182972

Letter from a Community Leader following the vote:

Dear All,

Many thanks to all of you who took the time to contact planning councillors, I believe many of them were surprised at the strength of feeling there is against this development. Of course, the voting today was in for reserved matters in the main regarding surface water drainage. I will not go into details but basically the developer is proposing to take the surface water across fields to Roseworthy stream, it is very complicated process and extremely costly. SW Water have not as yet calculated how much!

The voting today was strange, after over two hours of debate it was still difficult to determine how things were going. However, the final count was 9 votes against, a majority. That of course meant the application would be refused. However, before taking the final vote the chief planning officer, Mark Broomhead, intervened and advised the councillors to go for a deferral rather than refusal and of course this what they did. So, the outcome now is that the application has been deferred and will come forward again.

When he addressed the meeting, the developer warned the council that if the application were refused, they would go to appeal and most probably win consequently there would be costs against Cornwall Council. This threat was obviously taken on board by some of the councillors including the chief planning officer!! I am amazed that this is allowed to happen, but why am I not surprised.

Many thanks for your support,

Jean