COUNCILLORS were urged to 'stand firm' this week and refuse a proposal to allow visitors to use empty flats in a student block as holiday lets over the summer.

Empiric Student Property want to be allowed to rent out the rooms in the 190-bed Ocean Bowl student block in Pendennis Rise, Falmouth from June to August.

Last month an application to allow student accommodation at Fish Strand Hill to be used for holiday lets was recommended for refusal by the town council.

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At the first meeting of the new town council's planning committee on Monday, Empiric's planning agent Isabel Brumwell said the company was applying to lift the restriction stopping them from renting rooms out during the summer. She said allowing occupation by non-students over the summer break would contribute to vitality and footfall in Falmouth.

"Not holidaymakers, it would be graduates, friends of family of students, key workers, young professionals, so anyone who will be seeking an accommodation alternative to a B&B," she said.

Questioned by mayor Steve Eva as to whether she thought it was fair that local residents who had objected to the block in the first place should suddenly now be inundated with holiday makers over their summer break, she said: "I actually can speak from a personal level as my grandmother lives on Pendennis Rise opposite to those flats, so I'm aware that the site was originally appealed, however I would not consider seeing a person in a window has any more impact than seeing an empty window."

Cllr Eva said whatever you called the occupants they were still going to cause problems for local residents.

"You can call them graduates you can call them visitors or whatever you like but they are going to come in cars and they're going to fill the roads up again because they won't come by train they will come by car and they'll be no let up for the troubles we have already got in that area."

There was some support for the application from new councillor Zoe Young who said there was a place for cheaper accommodation at the university given the rise in homelessness.

"I wonder if initiatives like this may take the pressure off the existing housing stock by relieving the urge to turn everything into holiday accommodation," she said.

However Cllr Alan Jewel said the council had to stand firm on refusing this.

"Those conditions are there for a reason and that is to stop the decimation of the holiday trade which has forced a lot of B&B's to turn into residential properties and accommodation for holidays has been dropping off," he said. "There's still plenty out there, but this is going to water it down even more and we've got to stand firm on this."

Councillors voted to recommended refusal of the application.