Thoughts on Hayle

South Quay Suitable for Supermarket?

March 10th, 2010

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ING’s press release states (full text at hayle.net):

Marcel Kooij, Managing Director at ING Real Estate Development UK Ltd commented: “ING confirms its continued commitment to the regeneration of the historic harbour. South Quay remains the most appropriate site overall in planning terms for the foodstore and this first phase of development.”

ING has decided that the ‘sequential test’ of PPS4 makes the South Quay ‘the most appropriate site’ for a supermarket. It is possible that this one test might favour South Quay, but planning balances a large number of issues and a number of professionals disagree with the optimistic ING view.

CABE’s view:

Summary
We strongly object to this planning application. We would support retail proposals within the town of Hayle rather than on its edge, and have no objection to the principle of retail activity on this specific site. However, this proposal is designed with an out-of-town retail park approach which is not appropriate to a town centre location or the unique historic and coastal character of this site. Notwithstanding this concern we do not think that a planning application for a single building in this location should be considered in outline. Because our concerns about the scheme are fundamental we have not commented on the principles of appearance and landscaping; this should not be read as an endorsement of the illustrative design.

ICOMOS view:

Planning Circular 07/09: Protection of World Heritage Sites states that WHS status is a key material consideration, as are relevant policies in WHS Management Plans: “The Secretaries of State for Communities and Local Government and for Culture, Media and Sport expect planning authorities to treat relevant policies in [World Heritage site] management plans as key material considerations in making plans and planning decisions”.

Hayle deserves better than this and we urge the Council to REFUSE this application.

I wonder if the senior management of ING is being misled, either by its own staff or by its consultants. If you read the full text of the CABE and ICOMOS reports there is little solace for ING if they think they will ever get a supermarket on South Quay.

The constant failure of ING to present plans which are in any way sympathetic with the World Heritage Status of the area is extremely disappointing.

I hope they get the message soon and completely rethink their strategy for the harbour.

Hayle Harbour Development

May 16th, 2008

On Thursday, 15 May 2008, the outline planning application for the harbour development was advertised in the Cornishman – the clock is now ticking.

The public exhibition at Foundry Square opened the same day and runs until Saturday, 17 May.

Although the exhibition could only focus on the big picture, there were plenty of people on hand to answer questions.

I have been approached by a lot of people asking for guidance as to whether ‘this is a good thing?’ My view is that this is a wonderful opportunity for Hayle but that we have to pay attention to details. What happens here will affect us and future generations for over a hundred years.

Details, so far, include:

• The new bridge across Copperhouse Pool
• The development behind Clifton Terrace
• The development at ‘hilltop’ behind North Quay
• The height of buildings on South Quay
• Traffic through Hayle and through Phillack

I believe there are solutions (or ameliorations) to all of these issues that respect ING’s right to make a reasonable profit on this risky venture. But they do need looking at.

Please leave a comment here (click on the title ‘Hayle Harbour Development’ and fill in the ‘reply’ box at the bottom of the posting), or email me with your issues.

Hayle Area Plan

February 12th, 2008

Dear John Bennett – thank you for making this point. The Hayle Area Action Plan will have a momentous effect on Hayle – what it looks like, what it is like to live here and for children to grow up in. I am keen to see Hayle prosper but have major concerns about the proposals to develop so many sites including sites that are currently green land. Many of these areas have been green areas since maps began, some have fragile and unique eco-systems and once a green area is developed it will never return. Green areas make an area look pleasant, they make people feel relaxed and good about their environment – let’s not lose it! I know we need development but do we need this much development? It seems incredible that Hayle could need or support this many homes. Surely we would need a major investment in the infrastructure – roads, drainage, schools and healthcare to support so many people. What do others think?

Hayle Area Action Plan and Gypsies

February 10th, 2008

The Hayle Area Action Plan (HAAP) is one of the most important documents to be presented to the people of Hayle for their views in quite a few years. The plan, when completed, will determine land use in the Hayle area until 2026.

One item that has attracted a lot of attention is the location of Gypsy and Traveller sites. The HAAP lays out the legislation and government guidelines that must be followed and identifies a need for a single transit camp with 5 pitches for the Hayle area. A transit camp does not need to be near to services or the town centre. I think we will, without too much difficulty, be able to find such a site which does not meet local opposition.

There is good news and bad news in the fracas ensuing from this issue. The good news is that many more people are now aware of and involved in the HAAP consultation process. The bad news is there does not seem to be much interest in the other issues.

Under the revised Regional Spatial Strategy, the number of new dwellings allocated to Hayle has risen from 2,000 to 3,250 during the plan period.  Is there enough room for this number of new properties?  Will you have avoided having a Gypsy and Traveller transit site across the road only to find a housing estate with 1,000 new homes there instead?  The harbour development is currently proposing in the region of 1,039 dwellings.  We need to find room for the equivalent of two more harbour developments worth of housing over the next 20 years.

Perhaps more importantly, we need to find space for job-creating businesses.  It is not much good building homes if there is no work for the people who live there.

I hope that, once the dust has settled on the Gypsy and Traveller issue, local residents will turn their attention to the other important matters in the action plan.

Neighbourhood Policing

December 1st, 2007

I am the Hayle Town Council police liaison and, in this role, I attended a seminar on neighbourhood policing on November 13th.

The majority of attendees were police officers from the west of Cornwall (Helston to the Isles of Scilly) with HQ officers making presentations and leading discussions.  Civilian attendees were from town and parish councils, neighbourhood watch and other liaison groups.  There were about 60 police officers and a dozen civilians present. 

Central Government has tasked the police with taking a pro-active approach to neighbourhood policing and the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary has appointed an Inspector with the sole responsibility of promoting this throughout the area.  It was clear from the presentations that Police HQ wants beat officers to take the issue seriously and a lot of the day was spent comparing notes on what works and what doesn’t.

One of the issues being struggled with is: how should local police priorities be determined?  For example, if you asked a group at Copperhouse what their priorities were, they might be: noisy skateboarders, anti-social behaviour on the recreation ground and noise from pubs.  Residents of Foundry might cite:  groups of hoodies around Foundry Square; damage to boats on Penpol Terrace; and damage to motor vehicles.  The Towans area might be concerned with: dog fouling; mini-motorbikes; and speeding through Phillack.  So how can the police prioritise these issues and also capture those from Pathway Fields and Loggans estates?  The answer appears to be: have specific meetings with residents of problem areas and also have a meeting at the Hayle Area Plan Partnership or Town Council level to gauge more general issues.

Another important issue is ‘how can the police determine when an issue has been resolved?’  The best answer to this was ‘when the group setting the priority drops it from their top three’.  For example, if HTC placed Guildford Road speeding as its top issue, the local police might target this for a couple of months.  If, on reviewing the results, HTC moved this off the priority list, then the issue is resolved.  In this case, it is possible that HTC may determine from the results of the enforcement that a more permanent solution should be sought by contacting County Highways and our case would be strengthened from the data collected by the enforcement action.  In this way we would be operating in a partnership and the burden is not entirely on the police.  Once an issue is raised as a priority, however, the police will keep it on a list for periodic follow up.

On being asked if other important police issues might be overlooked because of the time spent on neighbourhood issues, some of which (like dog fouling) might not seem as important as anti-social behaviour or drug dealing, it was made clear that the police were aware of the need to time share among many responsibilities.  It is more that the time spent on neighbourhood issues is focussed on what the community feels important rather than necessarily spending a much larger percentage of the time on neighbourhood policing.  Our PCSOs already spend almost all of their time on neighbourhood policing and are closely in touch with problems and issues.  They have the support of the Beat Managers and the rest of the force when needed.

It is clear that the police have a strong commitment to neighbourhood policing.  Give me your feedback on what issues you would like looked at.

Hawkins Motors Site – Hayle Terrace

October 6th, 2007

At the meeting of Hayle Town Council on 20 September 2007, Matt Barton and Allan Hampshire of PDC were invited to respond to the Council’s resolutions at a prior meeting which were:

• To support the construction of 5 market value houses maximum on the existing footprint subject to: the open space being vested to Hayle Town Council prior to building, the open space being landscaped, the wave wall being continued along the entire length of the site and all of the houses providing off street parking.
• It is the will of the Town Council to further the first resolution. (Meaning: to support Hawkins if they pursued this approach).
  

Allan Hampshire is head of the Affordable Housing Task Force and has the responsibility to ensure sufficient affordable housing in the district. Allan referred to the large number of people on the housing register waiting for affordable housing and the difficulty of meeting the demand. He asked that PDC be given more time to come up with a solution for the Hawkins site that would still provide 26 affordable units plus some open space.

In the public participation session prior to the meeting commencing, Mr. Owen Philp made a statement. (Mr Philp lost both his town and district seats at the last election and he held the posts of either Chairman or Vice Chairman of Planning at PDC when the original agreement with Hawkins was signed and for most of the period when negotiations between PDC and Hawkins failed.)  Mr. Philp, whose position was surprisingly similar to that of the PDC officers, expressed his view that the site should be used for affordable housing and that the town council was turning its back on those in the town who desperately needed affordable housing.

During the meeting it was explained why the Council had arrived at its resolutions. In summary these were because:

• Talks between Hawkins and Penwith District Council had stalled after two years of trying;
• When asked in a Parish Poll “Should Hawkins Motors site on Hayle Terrace be brought into public ownership for use as an amenity area in perpetuity?” 90% voted in favour;
• The site is now in a Conservation Area and a World Heritage Site;
• Environment Agency regulations now require buildings to be raised 1.6m for flood protection (adding almost a floor in height);
• The Environment Agency had objected to previous planning applications attempting to put large numbers of dwellings on the site;
  
• Over 50 affordable units have been constructed in Hayle in the last three years and 175 are anticipated in the harbour development;
• The Council wishes to protect and improve access to Copperhouse Pool as much as possible.

and,

• The Council were tired of seeing the broken-down site in the centre of Hayle.

Hayle councillors are acutely aware of the need for affordable housing in Hayle. Indeed, at least one councillor is living in affordable housing and a number are personally aware of the difficulty of their children getting on the housing ladder.

Unfortunately, building 26 affordable units on this limited space is unlikely to result in a building which the people of Hayle would be happy with. Hayle Council has given PDC until January 1^st to come up with a design – after which, if the design is not suitable, we will pursue our original resolution.

It is important that the Council represents you. Please send me your views on this important issue so that I can pass them on.

Council Votes to Give Dogs a Break

August 30th, 2007

Penwith District Council voted on the 29th of August to implement a new dog control regime that is less restrictive that the current one but which is more likely to be enforced.

The new rules restrict dogs on certain beaches (the same ones as before) from May 1st to September 30th. Previously this was from Easter to October 1st. Easter sometimes falls in the middle of March and there are rarely many beach goers between the Easter holiday and the first of May.

The big news is that the ban is only in place from 8am to 7pm each day.

DEFRA guidelines stated that if the Council could not enforce a ban it should not be in place. Since PDC does not have a night enforcement crew it made sense to allow dogs during the evening and night period. It is still mandatory to pick up after your dog and stronger enforcement is now available under the new Dog Control Orders – including fixed penalties.

The new rules will go into effect next year.

Unitary Council

August 5th, 2007

It was not a surprise to most district councillors that the government approved the County Council’s bid for a Unitary Council. It does, whoever, make a mockery of the statement that the intention is to improve democracy in the county when around 9 in 10 residents voted against it.

I am frequently asked what will this actually mean for Hayle and Penwith. My answer is that I don’t have much of an idea. Hayle Town Council had two meetings with county officers before the decision was made. They got a tough reception the first time when they were unable to answer specific questions related to how planning would work and what powers would be devolved to town councils. When they returned, three months later, we asked the same questions – and they still did not know!  The council voted not to support the County’s bid.  One councillor said that he had supported the idea before the presentation and opposed it afterwards!

As I understand it, planning will be managed in four areas instead of in the six districts as now. It is hard to see how this will save much money and will probably cost a bit in reconfiguration. Penwith District Council planning officers are already running flat out and many Planning Committee meetings run after 11pm and occasionally to midnight. The new system will make things worse, not better.

Local delivery of services will be through Community Network Areas and it was initially proposed that Hayle and St. Ives would form a CNA. We pointed out to the county officers that we have just spent 5 years preparing a Hayle Area Plan which encompasses Hayle, St. Erth and Gwinear/Gwithian and would it not make more sense for that to be a CNA? Surely St. Ives should be linked with Zennor?

The CNAs themselves will have a staff and local office and there would be a total of 64 in the county. There would be a total of 82 unitary councillors and there would be 2 for Hayle. This replaces the 2 county councillors and 6 district councillors that currently represent Hayle. It is hard to see how this is an improvement in democracy.

The county bid says that town and parish council will take on more powers – but they do not specify these or discuss how they could be implemented. There was mention of some of the simpler planning cases being devolved to town council, but this would mean providing trained staff to assist with this highly technical process which has expensive legal consequences if mishandled.

We will, no doubt, find out more as time passes. The time scale is that shadow elections to the Unitary Council will take place in May 2008 and then the Unitary Council will take over from the County Council in May 2009.

I’ll post information on my web site as I receive it.

The Draft Regional Spatial Strategy (RSS)

April 26th, 2007

RSS could just as easily stand for Really Stupid Suggestions.

Unfortunately, Cornwall falls under the South West Region which includes Swindon and Bristol and whose northernmost tip is closer to Scotland than to Hayle!  Consequently planners ‘up country’ have no inkling about Cornwall and its special needs.
The premise of the RSS is a good one. We need to reduce energy usage in line with the Kyoto Protocol and the way to do this is to create sustainable communities where people can live, work and find entertainment – all without the use of cars.

Alas! Cornwall does not fit the mould. We do not have any large conurbations, such as Plymouth or Bristol, so the RSS invents CPR (Camborne/Pool/Redruth). The area of Truro, CPR and Falmouth will become a ‘golden triangle’ of development. Everywhere else can become poorer than they are now.

These selected wonder zones are elegantly named SSCTs (Strategically Significant Cities and Towns. I’ll quickly list the SSCTs in Penwith:

• NONE.

Since significant investment is only permitted in SSCTs where does that leave Penwith? Even the Hayle Harbour development and St. Ives Tate Phase II are technically illegal under the RSS.

Penwith District Council, Hayle Town Council and even I have made protestations on the asinine draft document. It is now in the ‘Examination in Public’ phase and we can only hope that the examiner listens to the representations.

This is part of PDCs official submission:

4. The Role of Hayle
4.1 Despite being on the verge of benefitting from a £175 million redevelopment scheme on the largest previously developed brownfield site in Cornwall, the fact that the draft RSS omits Hayle could result in it being wrongly construed as within the ‘small town and village’ category. This could have serious implications for the redevelopment of Hayle and could
affect funding for critical services such as health, public transport and rural facilities. In light of the criteria outlined for ‘Market Towns’ (Development Policy B) the Council requests that Hayle is recognised and referenced in paragraph 4.4.19. The complementary development relationship between Hayle and Camborne/Pool/Redruth should also be recognised, especially given that Regional Development Agency view Hayle in that light and have chosen Hayle as the base for Wave Hub. It should also be highlighted that a considerable level of research has been carried out in respect of the Hayle harbour proposal with regard to flood risk mitigation and work is ongoing in respect of the production of a master plan which seeks to provide environmental asset protection.
4.2 Account must be taken of the potential role of the town of Hayle. Recent developments which include a small retail park accommodating the likes of Next, Boots and shortly M&S, has raised the profile of the town. In addition, the long awaited Hayle harbour development, a major scheme of regeneration by ING involving a considerable predominantly brownfield site, is nearing application stage. It is now anticipated that the Harbour development plans will be likely to include circa 950 dwelling units in order to make the scheme viable and minimise the need for public subsidy. With regard to the question concerning additional greenfield development, the experience with Hayle harbour is that in order to provide a suitable mixed development and sustainable community a significant element of greenfield development is required in order to produce a viable scheme and minimise the need for public funding.
4.3 SWRDA has also committed considerable resources and finance in respect of the Hayle Harbour scheme in relation to Wave Hub the wave energy scheme which is located off Hayle in the St. Ives Bay. Thus, there are considerable potential benefits, not least from the potential location of R&D and support business related to wave energy development. Hayle is well placed in terms of the A30 Trunk Road network, has a rail station, and will benefit from a new park and ride facility (both rail and bus) to be located at St. Erth funded through the LTP. The rail link accounting for both Hayle and St. Erth Stations, in particular makes Penzance, CPR and Truro. Whilst road access is restricted in the far west of the Penwith District in terms of the ability to provide a reasonably sustainable transport service within the district Penwith is reasonably well placed to be able to serve its own needs, subject to suitable inward investment.

There are days when I despair that we will ever be able to drag Penwith out of the poverty trap it is now in. We must keep on trying but Really Stupid Suggestions don’t help!

Why Councillors are Councillors

April 4th, 2007

The Local Government Association (LGA) and the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA)
have carried out the fourth Census of local authority councillors in England and intend to carry out
a Census of councillors every two years to provide `snapshots’ of local government representation
and analysis of trends over time.

The report:

• covers the personal background of councillors;
• their work as councillors;
• councillors views on a range of issues;
• comparative data for the wider population.

Read the rest of this entry »

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