Cornwall 4 Change Statement

The following statement has just been received from C4C:

Dear Friend,

Last weekend (10 March 2018) the event ‘Planning for People or Profit?’ was attended by scores of town and parish councillors environmental associations, local action groups and other activists in Cornwall. The common concern to everyone is over-development and a Planning system that strongly favours profit-seeking housing corporations over the needs of communities.

Two leading figures in CoVoP, who are determined to address the inequity of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), travelled from Yorkshire and Cheshire to make presentations. Other speakers included leading voices from campaign groups in Devon (CPRE, EDA etc.) as well as Cornwall.

Full details of the contributors and their presentations will be made available soon, but a few points are so important that they’re worth stating immediately:

Firstly there is not a housing deficit but a housing surplus in the UK, which increased from 800,000 spare homes in 1996 to 1.4 million homes in 2014. Source: Daily Telegraph

Secondly, the Help to Buy scheme is a pot of £53 billion of public money. The first £43bn was put aside specifically to encourage the purchase of new build properties from privately-run commercial developers. Source: Sky News An additional £10bn of public money “for all properties” was added in November 2017, bringing the total to£53bn. Source: BBC News

Thirdly, there is agreement that Neighbourhood Development Plans (NDP’s) - put together with great care and effort by local communities - are subject to interference at a local authority level as they “don’t meet the housing numbers demanded by the Government.” This is a reverse of the original design for NDP’s which were meant to inform a Local Plan for an entire county, not vice versa.

Finally and specific to Cornwall, the local unitary authority now pays over £1.2 million per week interest on its growing debt. Source: Cornwall Council Annual

Reports 2009-2016 This in turn leads to unwise short-term decision-making that maximizes income and minimizes outgoings. Hence the intention to build over 50,000

homes in Cornwall, with no corresponding infrastructure of hospitals, schools, sewage

works and so on.

The conference concluded with an agreement to:

1) Use all democratic means to affect change from the grass roots to the top level of government with the aim of influencing the NPPF.

2) Attain status for Cornwall as a National Park that is fair, inclusive for ‘One and All’ and supportive of the local heritage, culture and natural environment.

Thanks for your support and please share this as widely as possible.

Cornwall for Change

You can sign up for the occasional Cornwall4Change newsletter at their new website

CoVoP also maintain a website

The petition ‘Save Cornwall’s Green Fields’ is at

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/protect-cornwall-s-green-fields