‘LISTEN to the people who elected you, and turn down these plans’. That was the message to councillors at a public meeting to discuss plans to build a Premier Inn in Falmouth town centre this week.

The meeting was held at Falmouth School on Monday evening, and attracted more than 100 worried residents and business owners.

The meeting was organised by Cornwall Council’s strategic planning committee, which will decide whether or not to grant permission for the scheme, which would see a 74-bedroom hotel built on the Campbeltown Way car park near Events Square.

The committee’s chairman, Falmouth councillor Mike Varney, said that decision had been delayed for a month in light of the information revealed at the meeting.

Two of the leading campaigners against the plans, Tamara Brush and Sally Humphries, told the councillors that they had found several discrepancies in the hotel’s application.

These included a failure to include the fact a planned restaurant at the site would be open to the public, and discrepancies over the number of staff to be employed at the hotel.

Doubts were also raised over the traffic assessment carried out for the application, and the availability of public transport for both guests and workers. The councillors were also told of fears for pedestrian safety when lorries deliver to the site, concerns over the impact on neighbouring flats, and worries over flooding.

Rosemary Hobbs, secretary of the Falmouth and District Hoteliers Association, said: “What Premier Inn has presented is not the whole story, and I hope the strategic committee can see through what they are doing.

“They are trying to force this disaster onto Falmouth. We are here tonight representing saying very loudly we do not want this, you have heard from the reports of the discrepancies in the application.

“The ammunition is there for you to turn around and say no to this scheme and to support the people who elected you by refusing this application.” Nigel Dalton told the meeting: “The place for this hotel should be out of town if it is needed at all, and I do not believe it is.

“There was a report a few years ago which looked into what Falmouth needed to move forward, and we were told there was enough small to medium hotels and B&Bs, and that we needed a five star hotel to create a destination.

“This plan is as far from a five star hotel as you can get, and they want to place it in the middle of the town.”

Andy Cracknell said: “If the committee are in favour of this, I hope you will tell us exactly what benefits it will bring to Falmouth, because I can’t see any.

“Everyone I have spoken to in the town, including visitors, say they are not happy about it, they are concerned it will create another Newquay.

“Premier Inn actively encourage stag parties – if you think the number of drunken revellers in town is bad now, if this goes ahead it will be carnage.”

Speaking after the meeting, Mike Varney said: “I have decided to withdraw the application from this month’s meeting and put it back by a month.

“I believe that is only right following the abundance of information we received at the meeting, we need to give ourselves more time to consider everything that was put forward.”