Stithians Parish Councils response to the Cornwall Council local plan for a 47500 houses 20 year target in Cornwall. The plan assumes that building houses, employment space and roads and other infrastructure constitute economic development. This is incorrect. It is particularly incorrect where Cornwall is concerned. A large proportion of the economy of Cornwall depends on agriculture, horticulture and like enterprises. A similarly large proportion of the economy of Cornwall depends upon tourism in its various manifestations from beaches and harbours to upland heath and public rights of way as well as the historic elements. The plan provides for the erosion of the availability of land, landscape and environment in significant quantities for housing, employment space and infrastructure thereby undermining the natural resource based enterprises. Significant reliance is placed in the plan upon Neighbourhood Plans as a mechanism for facilitating and enabling achievement of the various objectives. Neighbourhood Plans have yet to be shown as an effective and accessible mechanism for local plan formulation. To date none have been finalised in Cornwall and only very few in the whole of England and Wales. Cost is known to be a significant factor. Such plans are also subject to the vagaries of an Inspectors’ review and a referendum. To place such reliance on this mechanism as Cornwall Council do in this set of proposals is unsound. The map which is presumably a part of the plan is not fit for purpose. The plan seeks to actively diversify away from the only sectors of the economy of Cornwall which have consistently grown, tourism and agriculture and associated enterprises. This is unsound. The plan implies that retail provision is equivalent to economic development. Unless there is growth of the economy additional retail provision only increases competition for the available effective demand and increases the failure rate among businesses and settlements. This is unsound if retail provision exceeds growth of the economy. The plan identifies health and exercise as advantageous and states that facilities will be provided to facilitate wider practise. However no provision is made in the plan for the development or even enhanced maintenance of the network of Public Rights of Way which are falling into systematic disrepair as a direct result of current CC management policy. This is unsound as the objective cannot be attained without provision of the facilities. The plan sets out to deliver 442 400m2 of employment space, when 60 000m2 already stand empty and have stood so for a number of years adding to the amount of unused employment space cannot be seen as a sound policy. Insufficient data is provided to enable us to know how this figure was arrived at so, using the figures given in the Workplace (Health, Safety & Welfare) Regulations 1992 as a rough guide, the inference is that this amount of work space could service as many as 88 400 jobs. The provision of additional housing is for 47 500 of which a proportion will go to meeting existing unmet demand. The mismatch between housing and jobs cannot be sound. The trunk road network is prioritised for development ahead of the rail network. The opportunity to get traffic off roads by investing in upgrading the rail network is greater than can be achieved by developing more roads. Improving the railways also consumes less greenfield land. The current prioritisation is not sound. Policy 15 refers to the wind turbines being acceptable as long as they do not generate shadow flicker, interfere with air traffic radar or navigational operations. NO reference is made to noise nuisance or the impact of technology on the landscape or environment. This is not sound. The policy does not refer to the Environment Agency flood risk assessments as a benchmark in flood risk assessment and takes no account of the cumulative impact of development on flood risk particularly in the flood plains. This deficiency makes the policy unsound. The policy as it relates to the Camborne Pool Redruth Community Network dismisses the parishes surrounding the conurbation in three sketchy paragraphs. That these parishes constitute a greater physical area than the conurbation means that the plan as far as those parishes are concerned is unsound. This trend of focusing excessively on the urban areas makes this plan unsound.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 13:00:31 +0000
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