Welcome ‘Pause’ on Cornwall Council’s Commercial-led Planning Application to Itself for homes in Heamoor 

Local MP and retiring Cornwall councillor, Andrew George, welcomed today’s planning committee decision not to follow officer’s advice and to instead defer a planning application for 72 ‘Extra Care homes’ in Heamoor. Mr George told today’s Planning committee that crucial questions remained unanswered, and that passing the application could open the door to a ‘Trojan horse’ for the mainly commercial use of a valuable public asset – ie. The former John Daniel Centre site and associated buildings in Heamoor. 

Andrew George, Cornwall councillor for Heamoor, fought to stop the planning application from being nodded through by officers under delegated authority, and to instead be reviewed by its own planning committee today. 

The committee considered the evidence and agreed to defer the planning application at this morning’s meeting. This will give those concerned about the way the application has been handled more time to seek answers to critical questions.  

The council is proposing to deliver ‘Extra Care’ homes on the site. Though Mr George strongly supports the purpose and the use of the site for this, he became concerned when the council changed the proposal from 100% affordable for locals to instead being commercially led, with only 30% affordable. 

“There’s something disturbingly Putin-esque when you witness a council apply to itself for permission to do something on its own land and to then ask its own lawyers to mark its homework when it’s challenged, and to hope Councillors will be too busy with elections to notice what they’ve done! That they wanted to pass it ‘on the nod’ behind closed doors after having made significant changes to the proposal it presented to the public, is alarming, and has dented my faith in the professionalism of local government officers.” 

Mr George, who stands down from the Council in three days’ time, has vowed, as local MP, to request that the new Council looks again at this project and delivers it as 100% for local benefit in perpetuity. 

“I’m strongly in favour of the proposed delivery of Extra Care homes on this site. But let’s make sure that it provides for the affordable housing needs of local people in perpetuity and not that the marjority of the scheme can simply be used for the council’s commercial gain. 

“Well done to the planning committee for raising questions and then deferring the application. It is concerning that the committee were misled. For example, Nancealverne school has spent over half a million pounds refurbishing one of the buildings to provide for the rapidly growing needs in the area and providing excellent services to students in its new Upper School which is temporarily on site. They realise they can’t stay there forever, but they appear to have been misled. The council incorrectly asserted that they should cram all their services onto their very limited existing school site.  

“All of these matters need to be looked at in the round. The planning committee members were given an impression that these issues had been resolved and were accepted by the current temporary users of the buildings.”