Helston Town Council and the group behind Helston Museum are to jointly employ a new events officer to help attract more people to the town.

Councillors voted unanimously in favour of the proposal from the South Kerrier Heritage Trust and South Kerrier Alliance to form a three-way partnership.

Town councillor Nicola Roberts summed up the feeling of members when she said: “I think it’s a no brainer – it’s something we can’t lose.”

It will be the job of the events co-ordinator to promote the museum and the town itself, as well as events, and run the Visit Helston website and social media accounts, based out of Helston Museum.

The heritage trust will split the cost of the new post 50:50 with the town council, which agreed to provide funding of £7,000 for a minimum of three years using remaining ‘supermarket cash’ given by Tesco and Sainsbury’s six years ago to offset the effect of their new stores on the town centre.

The role will come with a National Living Wage salary of £8.28 per hour, including tax and National Insurance contributions, working on the basis of a 30-hour week.

At the same time, a new marketing and events group involving representatives of the three organisations will look at a new programme of events and how to promote the town.

SKA will ask its existing team at the Old Cattle Market to be in charge of organising and running these events.

It comes after the town council refused a request by the Helston Business Improvement Partnership in January, to extend officer Shirley Moralee's contract by a further three months, to investigate creating a community interest company (CIC) to manage events.

Instead it asked HBIP to itself contact SKA about forming a possible partnership, or look at becoming a CIC on their own.

Last Thursday town councillor David Potter said he was “disappointed but not that surprised” to learn that HBIP had not come forward with a proposal.

“They had the opportunity to make something of it; they have made nothing of it,” he added.

He did, however, acknowledge the “lots of great work” that HBIP had done for the town before going on to support the bid by SKA and the SKHT, saying: “I’m really encouraged that this proposal is community led.

“I would like to invite the businesses into what’s planned, not exclude them.”

Deputy mayor Gillian Geer explained that HBIP had been led by “some very strong characters” who had taken a step back, adding: “At that point there was nobody stepping forward to take that place. It’s met its natural end.”

Mrs Geer praised Judith Haycock and David Turnbull, from the two organisations proposing the new partnership, who she said had “worked extremely hard” to “come up with a solution to our problems.”

Councillor Ronnie Williams said the SKA was “extremely well run”, with experienced staff, but with three organisations coming together he could “not really see it working.”

He wanted to see the council employ an officer itself – the other alternative suggested at January’s meeting.

However, after hearing other members were in favour of the partnership he agreed to back this also.