Sadly, this poster was produced for the newspapers around 6 years ago, when things were getting so dire in Cornwall, that a few individuals purchased advertising space in all of Cornwall’s newspapers and a few magazines. Have things improved since?

Below are a few anecdotes, articles and comments about Phil Mason and his planning disasters during a career at Restormel District Council and then at Cornwall Council (before and after the UA), that has spanned three decades. Like the doomed German sixth army’s catastrophic decision-making at the battle of Stalingrad, successive council CEOs (including Kate Kennally since 2017) and the executive/cabinet (including Bob Egerton and Dulcie Tudor) have allowed Phil Mason to plow on in his mission to build as much mass unaffordable, unsustainable, overpriced (to taxpayers and local buyers), senseless, irrational and community-destroying concrete; Cornwall is no more.
We now have a cross between an over-priced theme park, Sandbanks and an apartheid-style Council estate for the remaining locals who didn’t think that getting a normal local job at the going rate would catapult the mortgage multiplier from 3x to 15x. Silly them. But for Phil Mason and the executive on six figure wages for the past 20 years, in addition to huge pension pots, expense allowances and various bonuses, what would it matter anyway?!

The latest madness concerns Truro City FC which was based at Treyew Road since the 1950s, with a ground within walking distance of most locals and held in trust by a few individuals. Now we have ANOTHER supermarket being built in its place, the seventh in a city of barely 25,000 and all that food within walking distance of the town centre, and of course plenty more free parking to compete nicely with what’s left of the city’s independent shops. Here’s one commentator:

“Cornish progress, thanks to Phil Mason and Cornwall Council planning department: after several decades as a local community football club within walking distance of most Truronians, Cornwall Council allow the “stolen” trust (see Kevin Heaney’s Cornish Homes) land to convert to ANOTHER superstore… within walking distance of town and opposite two other superstores! Progress indeed when you replace one of the few leisure facilities into another store to feed the obviously starving hordes of Truronians, now with seven supermarkets within a stone’s throw of the city centre. Another belter from Moron Mason…”

“Going to rant....People are moaning about delays to our NHS hospitals and ambulance wait times.

Not that this is the whole problem, but did those in power who gave permission willy nilly to developers to build thousands of houses, not stop and think for one second that bringing thousands more people into the duchy, while failing to house our own people first, would end with trouble?

Absolute total and utter failure to address lack of infrastructure and look what is happening already! Perhaps it's not just parties that need to be investigated.....”

And here was a St. Austell resident’s takes on Mason, another town completely ruined by him when he was planning officer for Restormel, and evidently still being ruined today:

“Mason is a complete fucktard. He doesn't know the meaning of the word  planning.

At tonight's planning meeting we have 3 major applications. That's on top of the 'garden Village' and Wainhomes  Trewiddle Farm development.

Over 2,000 houses planned or underway. That's even before the council sell off the council offices on Penwinnick Road which is earmarked for housing.

The council say they want to 'consult' as to what to do with the land. Everyone knows full well  the site has been deliberately run down and earmarked for housing.

Makes me so angry.

St Austell is becoming a developers paradise because the land is cheaper here than elsewhere...”

Mason strikes again

“After council strategic director Phil Mason gave a personal assurance to the audit committee that the project would be completed on time and on budget - the council then announced that it was having to scale back the scheme. This meant that two of the trails were scrapped entirely while other sections would no longer be off-road and would require users to cycle on the existing roads’’.

A letter from one resident to the current council leader:

“Dear Linda

The above paragraph from a Cornwall Live article clearly illustrates and reiterates the reason why a petition for Mr Masons removal that has gathered circa 15000 signatures and comments was initiated which despite the number of signatures was unfortunately wilfully ignored by the previous administration.

This seemingly Teflon coated individual has during his over lengthy tenure as a council employee, firstly with Restormel District Council, presided over so many similar catastrophes that have cost Cornish council taxpayers so dearly over time that I feel the argument for his removal is increasingly hard to ignore in the current climate.

Fiasco’s such as this abortive project sap so much energy from an already creaking system and potentially inflict severe reputational damage on those left to clear up the financial mess which was created by others, I rest my case!”

For those - and there are many - really concerned about the old SWRDA raising it’s ugly head once more, the same one that John Prescott ran from London, Bristol, Taunton, Exeter and Plymouth, oh and Truro, if any (Westminster/European) money actually filtered down, here’s an update from Graham Smith on the matter:

“Dear Colleagues and Friends,

All that glitters is not gold, but possibly a lot of waffle and no substance. Nothing to crow about. Just another backward step, It looks like we are moving closer to Westminster, more concrete, more imports and more carbon.

Is that it? Levelling Up White Paper promises a “West of England Combined Authority” as its definition of devolution.

The government’s Levelling Up White Paper has left officials and councillors at County Hall scratching their heads over precisely what it means.  There are fears that ministers have revived ideas first developed 25 years ago to create what was then known as a South West Regional Assembly - with local government for Cornwall administered mainly from Bristol.

A key passage from the paper says the government will provide £900 million - but only “over 30 years in a devolution deal for the West of England Combined Authority, giving the West of England significant powers over transport, planning, skills and employment, and control of the investment to boost economic growth.”

This seems contrary to the much-hyped talk of Cornwall getting a County Deal with more powers transferred from Whitehall to Truro.

Another passage says: “Cornwall and Devon, Plymouth and Torbay invited to begin formal negotiations to agree new devolution deals.”  Taken at face value and applying conventional rules of grammar, this would mean Cornwall and Devon together might get a deal.

The document confirms that there is no new money which has not been previously announced.  While the Isles of Scilly is a winner, with millions invested in a new ferry service, there is nothing for Cornwall.

There has been muted response from County Hall, but St Austell and Newquay MP Steve Double said: “The devil will be in the detail, it is incredibly helpful to see the figures for the Shared Prosperity Fund will be greater than previous EU funding equivalents, as well as the commitment from the Secretary of State to enter into early negotiations with Cornwall Council for more devolved powers, something I am sure our Conservative administration will be able to deliver.

“It is by working together as a team that we will succeed and I look forward to now doing all we can to get the most for Cornwall from today’s big announcements.”

Finally, we’re sick of repeating ourselves and there are so many outrages perpetrated by Cornwall Council, often driven by Mason and his colleagues, and such scandalous wastes, such as the price paid for that bit of farmland at Langarth (between Chiverton Cross and Treliske Hospital) to accommodate another 10,000 residents and cars (coming soon), which amounts to unproven criminality (when you pay 100x the value of something using public funds, to an unknown and unproven speculator, that’s some kind of fraud right there), but we have to share this snippet from 2018, just months after this petition was launched (in July 2017), so already four years ago, yet things have only got worse. The only constant in this whole destruction of Cornwall: Phil Mason still has his job and will probably retire early after 30 years with a massive golden handshake.

Our water is polluted everywhere, our roads are choked, our surgeries and schools are full, our only hospital is crumbling and our air is now toxic in at least nine towns, But all is well in the world of Cornwall Council, with at least £2bn in debt soon passing it on as council tax to you and me.

In life there’s givers (council tax payers) and there’s takers - Phil Mason’s posse:

THIS IS A SAMPLE OF WHAT HAS BEEN SAID ABOUT THE CHIEF PLANNER WHO HAS SINCE BEEN PROMOTED.

1st March 2018

Dear Councillor Nolan

You are respected as a fair and decent man, having noted your expressed dislike of the petition to remove the chief planner I would like to explain the reasoning behind it because let me assure you the decision to institute the petition was not undertaken lightly.

The background being that as a group we were fully aware of the chief planners previous track record at Restormel Council which cannot but make one wonder why he was appointed to his present post in the first place which was effectively a promotion and therefore interpreted as a reward for what was in reality failure in his previous post.

You may be aware that a group of concerned Cornish people have campaigned against hyper development since the imposition of the unitary council in 2009 coming together on a more formal basis when the Langarth / Stadium planning outrage slipped through the system on the nebulous promise of a ‘’free stadium’’ which entirely predictably has in reality proved to be far from ‘’free’’.

The subsequent hubris that resulted from the Langarth fiasco and the way Cornwall Council handled it has been entirely Cornwall Council’s own doing, creating for itself in the process a growing level of anger and disrespect that should make everyone involved hang their heads in shame.

Indeed it was amazing to hear the chief planner actually admit that mistakes had been made and the project was actually a mess which coincided with Councillor Pollards similar admission during a debate on the Cornish Stuff website.

Cornwall Council has chosen over an extended timeframe to wilfully ignore all overtures, refused consistently to answer reasonable legitimate questions and generally treated everyone of us with disdain bordering upon contempt even resorting to empty laughable threats of legal action in the recent past.

For example the now notorious private developers forum gave developers an opportunity to cosy up to planners in a highly questionable manner the more so when the minutes of such meetings went underground.

No similar opportunity was ever afforded to those who opposed the developers effectively denying them their democratic right of formal reply, which Cornwall Council itself always insists on.

As a result of this and the perceived lack of accountability that Cornwall Council planners appeared to operate under, given the positive bias repeatedly exhibited toward developers, it was decided to call the chief planner to account personally.

While this may be seen as brutal and any collateral damage regrettable it has certainly captured the attention of those who had previously chosen not to acknowledge the problems that exist that have effectively shredded Cornwall Councils reputation and credibility in the eyes of swathes of Cornish council taxpayers

Having reached the point where being repeatedly ignored was no longer an option it was decided to adopt a harder more unorthodox approach by calling for the removal of the named individual deemed responsible for the abysmal state of the planning system in Cornwall.

In these circumstances it was not a personal attack on the individual but an expression of extreme dissatisfaction with the system that the highly paid individual in question was responsible for delivering.

Let it be clearly understood that none of this would have been necessary had Cornwall Council extended the common courtesy of the same treatment and attention afforded to those involved in the Private Developers Forum by affording us the democratic right of reply.

Effectively we feel that Cornwall Council misjudged the depth of feeling by making the fatal assumption that the protestors involved would simply give up and go away, clearly this has not been the case.

The petition will continue to run gathering comments that highlight the problems that our council should be fully aware of that hitherto have been wilfully ignore.

Given the fact that the chief planner appears to have been sidelined we are examining the possibility of modifying the petition to focus on the activities of the already notorious Strategic Director Economic Growth and Development who is seen as a one man menace to Cornwall’s cultural social and environmental heritage.

Thank you for your attention

Over 54,000 people have signed this petition so far. The organiser would like to reach the target of 60,000 signatures before she hands it in on Valentine's day and would greatly appreciate your kind support https://www.change.org/HaltHarmfulHousing