Homeless pods protest held in car park in Cornwall

The protest, which was attended by several Penryn Town Councillors such as Chaz Wenmoth and Tamsyn Widdon, was organised as a way of urging Cornwall Council to re-think their plans and make it clear the issue is not with the pods being in Penryn, but more the Commercial Road car park as a location for them.

During the protest, Cllr Widdon gave a speech in which she urged people to keep building the momentum behind the campaign in order to hopefully have plans changed.

Cllr Tamsyn Widdon spoke to campaigners who gathered in the Commercial Road car park in Penryn

Cllr Widdon told the crowd: "When Cornwall Council's Housing Department first introduced the idea of these housing pods, it seemed like a fantastic idea, I sit on the Economic Growth Committee and I was supportive of their effort to try and find homes for people who were at risk and homeless.

"They're currently paying for people to be in Premier Inns and Travelodges all around Cornwall and it's really expensive for the council to do that.

"So they bought maybe around 200 of these containers that were well insulated and quite nice.

The protest was attended by locals and town councillors

"They bought them all and went 'right, now lets find places for put them.'

"The other thing that annoys me about the fact that they want to put he pods here is that if we want to get community transport schemes that serve more people and enable less queues on the road, as fuel prices rise and we all find it more difficult to have our private cars, we should have more public transport that makes it easier for us to get around.

"We need spaces like this here to keep minibuses and community cars and shared car schemes.

"People say to me, as a Green Party person, how can you possibly be against housing the homeless and pro car park spacing, well, it's not as easy as that, it's not a black and white situation.

Many campaigners were concerned with the affect the pods would have on the town if placed in the car park

"They don't understand how difficult we have it in Penryn to find safe, off-street parking and they are absolutely aware of the need to house people, so we need to convince those individual committee members that, by objecting to this particular application at his particular site, we're not, by any means, pitting ourselves against homeless people."

Mary Davids, a local resident who has lived in Penryn for 16 years, said: "For me one of the main things is the catastrophic affect it will have on local businesses.

"When we moved here, the main street was fairly dead, and a lot of the sites that were former shops have been taken over, there are cafes and barbar shops and young people running vintage clothing shops.

"If people can't park so that they can visit those, not to mention all the restaurants over here and Jubilee Walk.

The protest was organised to build momentum in the hope Cornwall Council would re-think its decision

"It really feels like there's a revival and this could just quash it.

Andrash, one of the organisers of the event, added: "It's the easiest solution, but it's not the right place.

"This car park was free when we came here, and it was fairly full, and it's now a paying car park so some people avoid it.

"But again, they've got schemes now, you can buy 25 tickets for £1.20 each and then you use them up, so it's £1.20 per day rather than £5.

"So it's a very good deal if you're not using it all the time and that what a lot of people do."