Porthleven’s MP has vowed to do all he can to help improve the village’s mobile phone reception and footpath links and ensure the future of its most iconic building.

Derek Thomas, who said of his teen years and early 20s “if I wasn’t eating or sleeping I was in Porthleven,” met with the town council last week to discuss how he can help with their projects.

Mr Thomas, who before he became MP was a member of St Buryan Parish Council in the far west of the county, said he understood “the enormous opportunity but also pressure” on parish and town councils to take on more from Cornwall Council and the expense this entailed.

For this reason he was in the process of asking all councils in his constituency to put forward proposals of how he could help them.

In Porthleven, councillors chose grant funding for the Bickford-Smith Institute to pay for essential restoration, creating a proper footpath from Porthleven to the Penrose Estate, and improving modern communications as their top three priorities.

Mayor Barbara Powell said: “In our questionnaire for the neighbourhood plan, number one everyone wants is more parking. We can’t help with that, but the second was they want to walk to Penrose safely.”

She explained that it would need the approval of the people who own the land – understood to be five different landowners – but it would nice to have a path that people could not only walk on but also be accessible for cyclists and wheelchair users.

Deputy mayor Andrew Wallis added, however, that there was little point trying to negotiate with the landowners if there was no money to do the project.

Mr Thomas promised to speak with the Department for Communities and Local Government.

With regards to the institute and clock tower, Mr Wallis said: “If we were to put in a bid it would be useful to have you waving a flag for us. With your influence it might help us.”

Mr Thomas described it as “fantastic building” that he had seen inside for the first time at the council’s open day at Easter, and advised that talking about the funding needed early on often helped, “so when it does get mentioned it’s no surprise.”

Finally, Mr Wallis said that Porthleven received superfast broadband and 4G mobile phone signal from most providers except one, which seemed to be “unreliable.”

Mr Thomas said the government was currently working through proposals at committee stage to force operators to allow other providers to use their system, which should resolve the problem.

He added that there was an app that could be downloaded to your mobile phone called Open Signal, which constantly fed back to central government where the phone was dropping out of signal coverage.

“A lot of money is being offered by the government because of this type of technology,” he added.

Mr Thomas also said how legislation was going through to force BT Open Reach to allow other companies to offer super-fast broadband.