The surprising and still unexplained decision of Aberfal/Falmouth University to withdrawl from the Combined Universities in Cornwall (CUC) forum runs directly against the mandate for Tremough to soon become a University of Cornwall.

The University of Cornwall Support Group managed after years of lobbying mainly Exeter who wanted a satellite only in West Penwith to pool its limited activities in Cornwall into a joint project with Cornwall College, Falmouth and Plymouth University to access Cornish European poverty funding (Objective One £400m) This joint facility was to be the foundation for a stand alone federal University of Cornwall centred on Tremough,Redruth.

Penzance and Bude or Bodmin.

This has ten years later come to nothing like ythe promised project, with Exeter effectively annexing Tremough as a satelite and Falmouth now abandoning the framework completely.

We see the Tremough campus actually opposed by a sizeable portion of its host Cornish town, we see its VC awarded a huge pay increase of £57k and Exeter access for deprived background Cornish students being effectively nill and over a third of its students coming from Public schools.

This from a Cornish point of view and we will reform University of Cornwall Support Group to again call for our valuable funds to be used nor a genuine University for Cornwall and not centred on Tremough alone.

One has to caution Falmouth and Exeter that neither seem to be meeting the spirit of Cornish EU funding and as such both may be forced to repay the funds advanced for this project.

This all is very depressing on what should have been the legacy of Objective One investment and is now seen as a being annexed by Exeter and squandered by Falmouth who appear un interested in a Federal University which would have avoided the madness of overloading Falmouth and failing Redruth Penzance Bodmin and Bude.

The group is reformed today

Tim James

Chy an Botallack

Penzance