Demand that Cornwall Council Planning Officers and Councillors apologise to the Cornish public for their disastrous and damaging record.

Cornwall is being destroyed and its natural and built environment has experienced continued and accelerating degradation. Our precious, unique landscape and cultural heritage is disappearing through the continual facilitation of ugly and inappropriate hyper-development. Shockingly, this development has even failed to address local housing needs, as it is clearly not designed to meet that objective, being cynically marketed up-country. Nor has it benefited our persistently weak economy. Apart from the obvious damage to Cornwall’s landscape integrity, increasingly angry and upset residents are afflicted by soaring levels of traffic congestion and air pollution. Flooding risks have increased, and surgeries, schools and Treliske hospital are all failing to cope with the huge population growth created by the facilitation of rapid in-migration.

The Council’s short-sighted, mass-urbanisation culture, which has become utterly out of control, fails to recognise that Cornwall’s rural nature is one of its most important and highly valued assets. Planning blight, seemingly encouraged by Planning Officers, is often, and increasingly, imposed against the wishes of parishes and residents. Why the Council should want to turn Cornwall into a replica of ugly, depressing and blighted parts of the UK cannot by answered by sane and rational argument. Soon, everything that gives Cornwall its charm and distinctiveness will be obliterated for ever. Planning failure is one of the reasons the Council is viewed with contempt by so many people.

Cornwall and its people deserve better - much better. The council has conspicuously failed to demonstrate any intent to try and protect us from the predatory, hyper-development agenda of national developers, as the unsustainable Local Plan target of 52,500 new houses demonstrates. It is high time they changed course or be replaced by those who have Cornwall’s best interests at heart.