Defeat of the day: no 2

At today’s Cabinet meeting, I spoke out against the content of the St Austell, St Blazey and China Clay Area Regeneration Plan. My comments were as follows:

“I do not believe that you can support the Regeneration Plan as presently drafted and I would wish to make the following points.

“This Council has a corporate commitment to the eco-communities project – everyone knows this is not something with which I agree – and we all know that the regeneration plan was principally drafted to underpin and protect the validity of that scheme.

“It is now clear that the eco-communities project will total 2,300 housing units at the Bal / West Carclaze site and at Par. In the Cornwall Local Plan – these are identified as allocations. These are referenced in Policy 2 which also supports ‘small-scale exemplar’ projects to positively promote St Austell as the green capital of Cornwall.

“But this regeneration document continues to promote large-scale ‘transformational’ eco-developments – and it is already being misused.

“We even have the Coyte Farm development – a supermarket, a retail park and a golf club, gobbling up a hundred acres of farmland – arguing that it is somehow a transformational green development. And that is frankly ludicrous.

“If you wish to adopt this document, surely it should be modified to be more consistent with the content of the Local Plan.

“I was also disappointed that the reference to proposals needing broad community support” has been removed and replaced with ‘must have been the subject of robust community consultation’ – which suggests the Council will ask local people what they think but not act on the comments if it doesn’t want to. 

“What message is this sending out to the communities of Mid Cornwall?”

For the record, my representations fell on deaf ears again!