Elected representatives must reject Route Partnership plan for Penzance

10/2/09

At the heart of the controversy surrounding the Route Partnership’s plans for Penzance harbour and the adjacent beach by Battery Rocks, is the issue of whether or not the people of Penzance are to have a say in the future development of their town. The Friends of Penzance harbour have written to the Cornishman on this issue and copied the letter to all elected local and Cornwall County Council officials.

According to the Route Partnership 85% of those who filled in a feedback form at the one-day exhibition in September 2008 said they did not support the proposals. Their figures from the January 2009 exhibition suggest this has dropped to 65%, but a number of factors can explain the difference:

• The exhibition was well funded and manned, and wholly biased towards the Route Partnership scheme; those opposing it were refused exhibition space and had only limited resources to point out why the scheme might not be such a good idea.
• The feedback questionnaire was biased and confusing and 25% of visitors failed to fill it in, many declining to be part of such a manipulative exercise.
• The exhibition contained content on important elements of the scheme that was simply wrong, leading people to support the proposals where they might otherwise have opposed them. The Route Partnership have already owned-up to one example of this (their claim that the scheme was not located on the Holy Headland after which Penzance is named) and another is the subject of a formal complaint.
• The Route Partnership persistently stated that the funds for the development would be lost if not spent on their scheme, and spent quickly. We now know that this is not true, but it will have persuaded many people to express support for the scheme.
• Statements by the Route Partnership that they will push ahead with the scheme regardless of the outcome of the exhibition will have reduced the number of people who thought it worthwhile attending the exhibition to register a protest.

At the time of the September exhibition the Route Partnership had little idea of the scale of opposition to their scheme, and no chance to come up with the strategies they subsequently employed. The September exhibition is thus likely to be the more accurate reflection of public opinion, and it ties in with the 85% against recorded in the Friends of Penzance Harbour exit poll.

On this basis our elected representatives should assume that close to 9 out of 10 people are against the Route Partnership’s plans, and treat it as a responsibility of public office to effectively represent this overwhelming majority. They must intervene to stop the Route Partnership’s scheme from going to the planning application stage, and if this is not possible then they must make sure that the planning application is firmly rejected. Then alternatives can be properly considered and a scheme devised that is acceptable to the people of Penzance.

Full text of letter to the Cornishman : download pdf | view pdf