Could banning traffic from Helston town centre be the key to encouraging more visitors to stop and shop?

This has been the discussion by town councillors, who have been looking into ideas to bring more trade to the town, including adding extra parking to Coinagehall Street – or even banning cars all together.

It stems from a plea by mayor Gillian Geer to “use your imagination” and find a way to change how people view Helston.

Mrs Geer explained: “We desperately need to make people stop in Helston and see it for the lovely town it is. At the moment they are zooming through as quickly as they possibly can, straight to Porthleven as far as I can tell.

“Porthleven is crammed all the time and poor Helston is sitting here packed with cars and no pedestrians, and that’s terrible.”

She believed Coinagehall Street was the place to start, particularly with the ongoing work around the Grylls Monument that now needed to be carried on, saying: “It should be glorious and frankly is grey and boring.

“There’s a lot of potential to change the way the town functions.”

Mrs Geer suggested the council should “rethink the street,” possibly adding herringbone parking and relocating market stalls to the “sunny side of the street,” adding big planters and allowing cafes to spill out on the street.

“Make ourselves a town people drive through and think, ‘We’ll stop here, have lunch and go and explore’,” she added.

Councillor Mike Thomas reminded members that “a great deal of time” had previously been spent looking into herringbone parking in Coinagehall Street, with regeneration officer Martin Searle confirming that a traffic study showed that to do this would require one-way traffic.

The problem with making it one-way uphill was that if Meneage Street was still open to larger vehicles these were unable to make a right hand turn into Wendron Street, meaning one-way downhill was the only feasible option.

At the time the working party looking into it decided that due to the likely impact this would cause on traffic in other streets it would be better to look at other things to develop, but Mr Searle said this was “not set in stone for time immemorial.”

Councillor Dave Potter then suggested a third option, to make the street entirely traffic free – at least at certain times of the day, or to only allow deliveries.

“I think we’d see a marked change. We need to do something radical like that,” he said.

Mr Potter also believed it extended further than just Coinagehall Street, but to Meneage Street also – even going so far as to suggest banning traffic in both those streets and Wendron Street also.

However, Mrs Geer stressed the whole discussion was simply putting forward suggestions at this stage, adding: “At the moment nothing is going to stop the cars coming down Meneage Street. For the time being, as far as we know Meneage Street is hunky dory as it is.”