The company behind plans for a new student village near Penryn has said the university travel plan is 'not working' and asked the public's support for more on site parking.

After submitting the latest application to Cornwall's planning department, Mark Dawes of CAD Architects was at a meeting of Penryn Town Council's planning committee to give an update on a proposal for Penvose Student Village, with 2,000 students beds and related facilities by the A39.

Among the issues raised was where students would put their vehicles, with Cornwall Council's current policy requiring new student developments to have next to no parking in an effort discourage car use, while CAD assumes this is unrealistic.

Mr Dawes told councillors: "We're trying to convince Cornwall Council we need to provide one space for [every] five students, and they're saying 'we don't want any.'

"We've said at every single consultation, people have turned up and said there's a problem with parking."

An outline application for Penvose included 400 student parking spaces, along with a further 450 spaces for a park and ride serving Falmouth and Penryn.

However, pre-application advice given by principal development officer Peter Bainbridge in December expressed "concern" about too much on site parking.

Mr Bainbridge said providing parking is "likely to undermine both the future travel plan for the student village" and "there is potential for parking to spill from the campus to the site and undermine the parking cap on the campus."

Mr Dawes told councillors: "We need to buy into the travel plan from the university, but something's not working."

He added that the company "won't get that talking to Cornwall Council themselves," and asked for support from councillors and the public.

Mr Dawes also told councillors that if it was supported, Penvose Student Village could provide a "holistic solution" to meet Penryn Campus' accommodation needs up to the end of the current local planning period in 2030. He said it would "address not just the future but also the existing issues by "attracting people out of less attractive HMOs" and into a green campus with facilities including a bar and cafe, restaurants and shops, and a doctors' surgery "if required."

And he said the benefit of the Treluswell site was that it was easily deliverable, whereas a nearby site which had been been earmarked for university expansion, currently occupied by Treliever Equestrian Centre, "can't be delivered without an aggressive compulsory purchase order to remove [the landowner] Mr Tozer from his land."

He added that the Penvose development could also help to safeguard parts of Kernick Industrial Estate, which have also been proposed as sites for student accommodation with the prospective loss of local businesses and industry.

The most recent updates to the plans are yet to appear on Cornwall Council's planning website, although the outline planning application is open for comments by searching for reference number PA16/11983.