Bid to install ANPR cameras on a popular Falmouth beach

This was the opinion of Cllr Alan Jewell at a meeting of Falmouth Town Council’s planning committee when it met to discuss the application for Maenporth Beach on Monday evening.

James Wright, owner of Maenporth Beach Café, has submitted revised plans to install an Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) bollard and camera, associated signage and a pay and display machine in the beach car park. A similar proposal was rejected earlier this year.

He says it is to help combat the problem of people camping overnight and anti-social behaviour, including beach bonfires which are forbidden.

Cllr Jewell told fellow members of the committee that Cornwall Council had decided it could not continue to maintain that part of the beach.

“So if there’s a big storm it will disappear and they’re not allowed to reinstate that part of the car park,” he said. “So in time that bank is just going to disappear and looking at the future there will not be a car park on the beach.”

He said over the years work with a digger had going on down the beach moving the sand onto the car park which then dried up and blew onto the road and was then cleared up by the council.

“Because of this Maenporth Beach, since I’ve been here all my life, is not half the beach it used to be,” he said.

Cllr Jewell, who is also on Cornwall Council’s planning committee, said he would be calling it in when the application is next heard, whatever the outcome of that night’s meeting.

Recommending approval of the application, the case officer said she understood peoples’ objections to ANPR cameras but she did not feel the installation of the cameras would “change the sense of place at this lovely beach”. She said she could not consider it’s effect on anti-social behaviour as it did not come under her remit.

However representations from both AONB, now Cornwall National Landscape, and the Neighbourhood Development Plan objected to the application saying that it would harmfully change the character of the car park.

Comments on the Cornwall Council planning portal are split between those supporting the application and those strongly objecting to it.

Paul Watson said after speaking to the owners of the café he believed that the introduction of ANPR cameras and parking enforcement in this area, would reduce the number of overnight parkers significantly as there will be a fine for those that ignore the simple rules of the car park.

But Mrs Elaine Timmins who lives locally said she strongly objected to the application and thought it was a “smokescreen” to make money out of people.

She said she rarely saw anti-social behaviour or people parking overnight and she was at the beach swimming very early everyday.

“The ANPR system is simply not in keeping with the beach being in an area of outstanding natural beauty - the introduction of this technology is not necessary, not called for and not a solution to the reasons the leaseholders have reported,” she said.

Councillors voted to recommend refusal of the application saying the council should listen to the experts from the AONB and Neighbourhood Development Plan.

The final decision will be made by Cornwall Council’s planning committee.