Letter to Cornwall Council's planning committee: Last November the Planning Committee approved the application PA22/02627 for the pod development in Commercial Road Car Park, Penryn.

As you will remember this would remove a third of Penryn’s entire supply of off-street parking to construct six single housing pods. Now that building has begun and the spaces have been lost I wanted to update you on the situation and ask that you do more to protect other towns in future.

As Penryn Town Council and every commenter on the application tried to warn you, the car park is now completely full from morning to night. There is no longer anywhere to park for customers of any of the businesses along Commercial Road or the Town Centre.

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Cars drive into the car park all day long and then leave again because it is full. Every other car park in Penryn is also full. We now have no off-street parking whatsoever in the whole of Penryn during the prime business hours.

I invite you next time you are in Penryn to take a look for yourself. Try to park to use a local shop or business. Take a moment to think about what this means for our town’s future.

I don’t know how long it will take to see the impacts of this decision in terms of closed businesses, boarded-up shop fronts, reduced footfall and increased poverty. But the damage is done. Now Penryners have to live with the consequences.

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I recognise that in making this decision you had to rely on the information you are provided with by your own Council. So I hope that in future you will demand more from Cornwall Council and its officers and staff.

It gives me no satisfaction whatsoever that all of my surveys and reports on the true level of use of the car park have already been proved right.

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My only hope is that you might avoid inflicting this kind of damage on some other town. That you might think twice before overruling a Town Council’s unanimous objections and every single local commenter.

That you might scrutinise more carefully the so-called “independent surveys” that are commissioned by the very people driving a project. Then at least there might be at least some small positive to come out of this devastating decision.

Michael Cant

Penryn