Creating a Sustainable Residential Community
A. To maintain a good quality of daily life for people living in the area of St Ives known locally as Upalong, and wherever possible improve their quality of life. We believe that this is important in ensuring that St Ives as a whole remains a sustainable residential community, in which people are able to live fulfilling lives and contribute positively to the wider life of the community.
B. To ensure that local people are appropriately involved in decisions and developments that will have a significant impact on their daily lives and that their concerns are properly addressed.
C. To work constructively with local government and other parties to achieve (A).
Residents of the Barnoon area of St Ives and surrounding streets, broadly constituting the western part of St Ives West Ward.
Many people in this area of St Ives, where properties often have no direct road access and/or no outdoor space that could be converted for parking, rely on being able to park at Barnoon within a few minutes’ walk from their homes.
In the two Barnoon car parks, Cornwall Council currently provides 70 resident permit spaces and 11 households on the waiting list for spaces. The St Ives Low Carbon Transport Project (LCTP) proposes reducing the total number of resident permit spaces at Barnoon to 26 (see Board 11: Middle Layer Strategy):
If put into action, this proposal would displace 44 existing permit holders and greatly extend waiting times for permits.
We believe that this proposal is entirely unworkable – indeed ridiculous.
The proposed displacement of Barnoon permit holders to the Island takes no account of the fact that the walk from the Barnoon area to the Island involves a steep descent through narrow lanes, which have uneven and often slippery surfaces. Returning by foot from the Island Car Park involves, in turn, a long, steep climb. The 39 metre difference in elevation between Barnoon and the Island makes this walk equivalent to walking down and then up the stairs of a 13-storey building for every car journey.
The assumption that visitor parking capacity in St Ives needs to be preserved at the expense of residents makes a nonsense of the LCTP’s overarching aim to reduce visitor traffic into and around St Ives, especially in light of the LCTP’s ‘Key Issue’ (Board 2: Introduction), stating that ‘Parking for local residents is insufficient’.
It also renders meaningless the LCTP mission statement (Board 1: Introduction):
We want to build on the rich tapestry of assets in St Ives, from its beautiful coastal scenery and living heritage to its vibrant culture and local community, focussing on the needs of residents …
No current Barnoon resident permit holder, provided they are a full-time resident of St Ives, should lose the option of continuing to park at Barnoon.
We would like a firm undertaking to this effect from Cornwall Council and/or the Project Team, and the proposal to displace Barnoon resident permit holders to the Island Car Park removed from the LCTP without delay.
The LCTP appears to have been drawn up primarily as a traffic engineering exercise, with little if any informed assessment of the impact of proposed changes on residents’ daily lives.
To our knowledge, there was no attempt to identify and consult with St Ives residents’ stakeholder groups, including Barnoon permit holders, before the plan was presented to residents in November 2023. Since Cornwall Council holds email addresses for all resident permit holders as well as residents on the waiting list for spaces, it would have been very easy to conduct this research.
The proposal to displace Barnoon permit holders to the Island Car Park is a very clear example of the failure both to consider residents’ wellbeing and quality of life and to ensure that planning decisions were based on the best available data.
Even in good conditions, the steep half-mile walk would be hazardous for people who are:
The added time and inconvenience would impact significantly on the daily lives and working/professional lives of, for example:
The proposal to displace current Barnoon permit holders would result in significant additional pressure on the SS3 on-street resident parking zone, which has very limited capacity. For much of the year, SS3 zone is already under pressure from non-resident use, including commercial holiday-let parking and opportunistic parking without permits.
The St Ives LCTP is funded as part of the Town Deal. It should therefore accord closely with the Government’s Levelling Up agenda. This is designed to improve the quality of life of residents in towns that receive funding. In our view, it would be improper to use Levelling Up funding in ways that would make daily life in St Ives more difficult, and in some cases unsustainable, for a significant number of residents.
If the process of reassessing residents’ needs results in major modifications to the proposed LCTP, we must point out that these modifications will be a direct result of the failure to engage in adequate preliminary consultation. This was a major error for which the Project Team should accept responsibility.