This letter to the press has been written by a full member of the Celtic League in Kernow who is a businessman working for stockbrokers: When will the madness end? When will our planners, councillors, elected representatives and Cornwall Council and planning officers stop the rot, overt corruption and stupidity of the current Wild West-style development going on in and around Truro? When will large out-of-town developers and big business, e.g. Duchy of Cornwall (aka Prince Charles), Waitrose, Tesco, Wain Homes, Persimmon Homes, etc... stop bullying, controlling and corrupting local planning decisions? It is sheer madness that in a small market town, which nonetheless has growing affordable and social housing needs, that we keep building massive and totally unsustainable housing projects that not only fail to meet these local needs (all far too expensive and out of reach for most), but pander to much higher income groups, generally from outside the Duchy. The resultant issues will be here for generations to come, including among others, traffic chaos, destruction of community coherence and cohesion, fast rising noise and light pollution, loss of green spaces, loss of prime agricultural land, shortage of decent vital services, e.g. hospitals, strained water and sewerage, shortage of school places, poor road surfaces. In the space of less than a generation, we have managed to turn Truro from small market town, with few if any traffic issues, growing at a sustainable pace, with low crime and low homelessness, very green, fresh and friendly, into another overly stretched and stressed traffic-dominated Home Counties town, with all the accompanying concerns (see above), new unaffordable ghost estates everywhere, with little aesthetic value and hardly in keeping with Truros natural heritage. Had you realised, Messrs Planners & Councillors, that Falmouth road - at the south gate into Truro - is now busier than it was 25 years ago, when the dual-carriageway bypass - Morlaix Avenue - was deemed necessary to alleviate that very same traffic in and out Truro? Had you noticed that the main Falmouth/Penryn to Truro A39 is now bumper to bumper, in both directions, from 8am to 8pm, almost daily, for 12 months of the year? And thats before the new development opens at Perranarworthal (its already an ordeal to get out of the Carclew/Mylor road onto the A39, at the Norway Inn), as well as those at Higher Newham & Tolgarrick farms. Had you not noticed that the back roads at Bissoe, Cusgarne, Chacewater, Threemilestone, Twelveheads, Besore, Wheal Jane, Carnon Downs, Penweathers, Kea, Perranwell and even Calenick, are all filling up rapidly, and again, are much busier (and dangerous) today, than the major roads around Truro were, less than a decade ago? And thats only on Truros south/southwest side; what about the North/East?! Even unmarked and unclassified Chyreen Lane between Playing Place and the Quenchwell Chapel/Asian Community Centre is stop-start every day! Its sheer madness and mind-numbing stupidity, to be allowing most of these developments to go ahead, and when some councillors, e.g. Councillor ******, are accepting gifts from these large upcountry developers, without so much as a single question being asked, you really have to question the whole system and whether we need to start taking more direct action against individuals and organisations that are flagrantly breaking the rules. How did Waitrose, Duchy of Cornwall and another large developer manage to get planning to completely destroy Truros northeastern gate.... by one vote?! A Park and Ride within walking distance of the city centre, yet in the middle of a giant traffic jam (from/to Tresillian and Trispen)? As Poohs friend rabbit might say wheres the sense in that?! Most modern cities place their park and ride schemes some miles out of town, normally on dual or triple carriageways, from where large buses can come and go quite easily, thus reducing the volume of traffic on the 2-lane roads nearer the town centres. But not so Truro which has miles of chocked up 2-lane traffic on the way to its park and ride. And when you finally get there, you wont need a bus as itll be much quicker to walk the last few hundred yards into town!! What madness, again, and completely moronic planning. A farmer on the East of the city has obviously struck up a good deal with a supermarket, giving the whole scheme at Union Hill his dubious support, and add to that a developers dream of another cheap and nasty 1000+ homes, and there you have it, a brand new characterless, isolated, alien estate, stuck in the middle of a field, outside Truro, presumably - and as with more and more of these faceless rabbit warrens - with few actual Truronians living in it. A parallel world. But hey, Truro meets its government-produced housing targets, Waitrose arrives and joins in the supermarket wars in Truro - destroying whats left of small local food & drink businesses in the city - and Duchy of Cornwall/Prince Charles shows off another healthy profit, to ensure the future King and Camilla can keep holidaying at Tresanton in St. Mawes, rather than at Hendra caravan park in Newquay. As one clever planning consultant said to me a few years ago, we dont have a traffic problem, you should see Newbury; and anyway, our development/building ratio to greenfield land is much smaller than the average in Britain. I told him I didnt want to bring Newbury to Cornwall and that lots of development didnt necessarily mean modern, prosperous or happy. I said these things in English, but he didnt understand. His reaction was that people like me - and presumably the tens of thousands from the cities who come and settle in Cornwall, to get away from the noise & traffic - get in the way of progress and modernisation. If progress and modernisation means millions of wasted man-hours resisting road rage with people I dont know nor care for, then I dont want it. Believe it or not, Truro had a very close-knit Cornish community once, and not so very long ago.
Posted on: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 16:05:36 +0000
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