More than 400 more homes are to be built in Helston after an agreement was finally reached following two years of "frustrating" battles.

Developer David Martin has at last been given conditional approval for his outline planning application to develop 404 homes on fields between Sainsbury's and the as-yet-unused Helston Business Park.

Mr Martin welcomed the agreement, but admitted he was "frustrated" by the time the length of time it had taken to get approval from Cornwall Council - particularly, he claimed, because the authority had actually approached him, as the owner of the preferred site for development.

"They actually asked me to make that planning application, because it was the preferred site," he told the Helston Packet.

"We have got it but it's been a long, hard struggle and I wouldn't like to be the person who they didn't want to give permission to!"

The principle of development had previously been agreed by Cornwall Council back in 2015, when 219 houses were approved, but a subsequent application to extend this number to "up to 430" on the land adjacent to Clodgey Lane and Gays Hill was submitted in January last year.

Now, following two years of toing and froing, in particular over noise levels from the nearby Flambards theme park, 404 houses - including affordable homes - have been agreed, by a Cornwall Council planning officer under delegated authority.

The authority's strategic planning committee agreed last August that this action could be taken, provided a section 106 agreement had been reached.

This had been delayed in part by a second noise report being submitted by MAS Environmental, a firm acting on behalf of Flambards, which claimed there were "serious land use conflicts" likely to arise between the two developments that needed to be addressed in order to "not place the leisure use in jeopardy" due to the "screaming, shouting and whooping" coming from the theme park.

The report claimed: "Legitimate concerns arise that any of the future residents would be entitled to exercise rights in nuisance law, ultimately leading to the demise of the business and loss of jobs."

However, when consulted the environmental protection team at Cornwall Council replied: "My understanding reading the MAS report is that the report author has not been to the site and therefore many of the arguments in the report may be conjectures."

As such the team said it believed the noise report did "not present any substantive issues which would lead us to change our previous advice."

The permission comes with conditions stating that a detailed application must be submitted in the next six years, agreeing aspects such as access, layout, scale and appearance.

A "dust management plan" must be put in place and no building work will be able to take place outside the hours of 8am to 6pm Monday to Friday and 8am to 1pm Saturdays. Construction work will be banned on Sundays, public holidays and bank holidays.