After being a very colourful planning officer at Restormel for many years, instigating what St. Austell locals called turning their town into a “shit hole”, Phil Mason was promoted to Cornwall County Council and then became top dog at the Unitary Authority. He was thus able to replicate his St. Austell experiment across Cornwall with a particular penchant for Truro, where he himself once described his planning efforts at Threemilestone - the aptly named Truro Western Corridor - a “mess” during a public meeting; the same meeting during which he begged gullible councillors to entrust him with a further £600m of taxpayers’ money (initially loans, so will eventually cost Cornish council taxes payers far more), to buy lots of farmland (at approximately 10x market value) from dubious “developer” Ian Saltmarsh of Inox.
By promising a “free” rugby stadium to more gullible people (much of the rugby fraternity), he managed to get the go ahead for this new town, so that 10 years on, with even the government calling his expensive plans weak and full of holes, we have no stadium, a crippled hospital, a car fiasco and plans to add another 10,000 between Chiverton Cross and Treliske. A town that will comprise houses mostly unaffordable and sold to London landlords and with a massive sewerage infrastructure deficit… in short, another catastrophe for Cornwall and the Cornish.
I expect they’ll add a knighthood to Phil Mason’s bloated public pension pot and service medals.
The man who singlehandedly dismantled Cornwall over three decades must be close to retirement, so we must take a little comfort from this. The same man who once stated that new houses were not the problem in Cornwall as “houses don’t drive cars”. Amen, brother Phil.
However, his successor Louise Wood seems just as clueless and incompetent, judging from the past three years in her role as chief planner (following Mason’s further promotion to director of strategy).
Only at Cornwall Council, where the intellectual and moral deficit is matched by the incompetence, nepotism, intimidation, graft and mismanagement. All under the watchful eye - for the past six years - of CEO Kate Kennally, herself a former Barnett Council CFO which she took to the brink of bankruptcy.
You just couldn’t make it up.
What a shower of expensive public morons.
I’m not sure the people of Threemilestone, Chacewater, Blackwater, Penstraze, Tregavethan, Chiverton and Treliske will know what’s hit them when 10,000 new residents and cars arrive on their doorstep!
So what’s happened now?
Last week, in their infinite wisdom, our strategic planning committee opened a can of worms by sanctioning this blighted cursed project.
A poem written by a Bard of Gorsedh Kernow Tim Saunders distils the bitterness this utter folly has generated.
Langarth*
My working area, my site, my holding,
here I have my strip of land;
my height, and my retreat in a high place,
here I have my ridge;
The Strip of Land on the Ridge I shall call it, so sweet a neighbourhood, and a brave place: nothing in this country is true and so everything is possible in our land.
Everyone has the need for their own hearth, warmth and shade for the bleak world, every home must have its territory, West, East, South, North; every whole people has a right to its determination in clear freedom: nothing in this country is true and so everything is possible in our land.
Here before worthy people ploughed three acres amongst green hills, sowed and reaped a harvest of the sun-coloured copper and the bright tin, set a city on the two banks, a hundred streets, and three spires above: nothing in this country is true and so everything is possible in our land.
Today begets tomorrow; people, tongue, land, beget a country; certain begets perhaps; the silence of a thought begets that which resounds; and it is qualitative change that quantitative change begets.
But what desire owns our fate?
Nothing in this country is true, and so everything is possible in our land.
Ones who do not love us have decided to turn a small plot into big shillings, press the wine of wealth out of dire need while oppressing our country, distilling from the fruits of poverty spirits of arrogant shameless opulence: nothing in this country is true and so everything is possible in our land.
Steel claws will tear soil and zealously throw it aside; the liquid concrete will soon flow and set slowly into set concrete; dark numerals will beget a number which will grow into a bright number: nothing in this country is true and so everything is possible in our land.
This set concrete will not give shelter to those who sleep under the stars; a burden wil it throw onto our city, break the back of our good chiefplace, choke roads whether narrow or wide, pollute thickeningly our blue air: nothing in this country is true and so everything is possible in our land.
Let us remember constantly our duty to bequeath to posterity a civilised world; let us not forget days gone, but let us keep the next day in our mind; let us remember, good weather or bad weather, that we are still a true people of renown: nothing in this country is true and so everything is possible in our land.
*As part of the current strategy to concrete over Cornwall with yet more ecologically disastrous and unaffordable developments, it is planned to inflict yet another infrastucture-crashing project on Langarth, just outside Truro.
CREDIT PACKET NEWSPAPERS FOR THIS CLEAR CONCISE REPORT ABOUT A VEXED ISSUE WHICH IS NEITHER CLEAR OR CONCISE WHERE THE LIES AND DECEIT INVOLVED OVER SEVERAL YEARS HAVE BEEN NEATLY AIRBRUSHED FROM HISTORY.
Plans to build a garden village with up to 3,550 homes to the west of Truro have been recommended for approval by planning officers.
A hybrid planning application for the Langarth Garden Village is set to go before Cornwall Council’s strategic planning committee when it meets next Thursday (Dec16).
Submitted by Cornwall Council itself the application has been years in the making and is the result of the authority performing an intervention in the various developments which were set to take shape in the Langarth area.
Multiple planning applications had been submitted and approved over several years but development had yet to start on any of them due to a slow down in the economy.
However the council decided to step in and set up a fund of £159million to draw up a new masterplan for the entire Langarth site as plans for a “new town” emerged.
The aim was to avoid a patchwork quilt effect of different developments being created and instead have a cohesive approach to the Langarth area. The council said it wanted to create a high quality development which would also meet housing needs and respect the environment.
Now those plans have morphed into the Langarth Garden Village which would include up to 3,550 homes, including 35% affordable housing; extra care homes; up to two new primary schools; medical facilities; emergency services facilities; retail and leisure facilities; office and workspace and acres of new parks and public open spaces.
The site for the planned Stadium for Cornwall also sits next to the Garden Village and there are plans to expand the existing park and ride at Langarth.
A new road – the Northern Access Road (NAR) – is also planned to carry traffic from the A390, through the garden village and out to Treliske.
In recommending approval planning officers state in a report to the strategic planning committee: “Your officers are supportive of the holistic approach undertaken by the applicant, in seeking to deliver a mixed and balanced community, which considers the site as a whole,rather than the previous piecemeal consents which were principally based around land agglomerates and retail led proposals. The comprehensive approach ensures that the proposals are genuinely informed by the landscape character and assets.”
Kenwyn Parish Council has supported the plans but has asked the council to add conditions including that improvement projects in Threemilestone are funded and do go ahead.
The parish council also asks: “Cornwall Council to make a commitment that Langarth Garden Village will maintain its village status and that it will not be subsumed into a ‘Greater Truro’ in the future.”
Chacewater and Kea parish councils also raised concerns about traffic from the development and the impact on sewage systems.
Kea Parish Council added: “In conclusion it would appear that there is little to commend this development nor the process and complete lack of regard for neighbours that this process has taken. It is our firm opinion that Cornwall Council should be ashamed of itself and its process with this application of much needed housing in the Truro area.”
Devon and Cornwall Police said that it would need to employ additional officers and would need improved police station facilities due to the extra demands which could be created by the development.
The force has asked for the developers to provide a contribution of £1.9m “to mitigate the impact the development will have on the police’s resources and to ensure that the Force can continue to provide the same level of service to residents, communities and businesses in and around Truro”.
NHS Kernow highlighted that the 3,550 homes could result in an extra 8,165 additional patients requiring health services. They state that a contribution of £984,000 will be required to help meet the extra demand.
MY COMMENT.
THINK ON THE BIGGER SCALE.
Langarth and the incompetence that allowed the deal to go through that is riddled with legal covenants that will cost further millions to remedy.
The speculator involved has laughed all the way to the bank already, having apparently bought the 260 acres of land for a rumored £100k an acre before selling 100 acres of it on at a rumoured £360k an acre to Cornwall Council.
If Cornwall Council were not so congenitally stupid and still determined to build at Langarth they could have done what the the developer did and bought the the land for in excess of a quarter of a million pounds less per acre from the farmer concerned.
That useless incompetent shower led by Councillor Paynter... Councillor German aided and abetted by Ex-councillor Kaczmarek... Ex-Councillor Egerton... Ex-Councillor Eathorne Gibbons who all appeared to be the developers Patsys via the appalling then Chief Planning Officer (who got promoted) and the ludicrous free stadium scam.
The current council have one hell of a financial mess to pick over which to be fair is not entirely of their making.
The only certainty at present being that whatever transpires Cornish council taxpayers will continue to absorb the massive financial burden that this convoluted financial catastrophe will place on them for the foreseeable future.
A message to Phil Mason:
“Well, you have done, and are doing, all that you possibly can:
"And how can man die better, than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers, and the altars of his gods."
In the final analysis the best that can be done, is all that can be done, whatever the odds, that must be done''.
In the meantime Cornwall bleeds because the intelligentsia, who pull the levers, know not what to do.”
An anecdote and a fitting tribute:
TECHNICALLY CORRECT ANSWERS ARE NOT ALWAYS HELPFUL.
A helicopter was flying around Truro in thick mizzle when an electrical malfunction disabled all of the aircraft's electronic navigation and communication equipment.
The pilot could not determine his position or course to steer to Newquay airport When he saw a large building he flew toward it, circling around the co pilot made a handwritten sign and held it in the helicopter's window.
The sign said "WHERE AM I ?" in large letters.
People in the building quickly responded to the aircraft, drew a large sign and held it in a window.
Their sign said, "YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER."
The pilot smiled, waved, looked at his map and made his route to Newquay airport and landed safely.
After they were on the ground, the co-pilot asked the pilot how did the "YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER" sign help him determine our position.
The pilot responded, "I knew that had to be Cornwall Council, County Hall, because the answer they gave us was technically correct but completely fucking useless."
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