Back in the real world

Away from the drama of Brighton, its back to the Planning Committee for me. The major trend down here, and elsewhere I suspect, is for people to build houses in their back gardens, or to knock their houses down and build bigger ones. As we saw from the Football Club the green belt is to be protected, even though farms are uneconomic and farmers are desperate to sell. But anything goes on the so called brownfield sites, which includes back gardens.

So last night we have an application to knock down a cottage on a suburban site in Truro, and replace it with five townhouses. That's right, five, and all with the full support of the officers who were happy to brush aside inconvenient rules on amenity space and problems with parking and access. I was grateful for the support of the Tories and Independents in rejecting this overdevelopement. We may call ourselves a City, but we're a pleasant old fashioned market town, and I will do what I can to keep us that way.