Cornish Social & Economic Research Group

This all made a lot of sense. The Record Office is fast running out of space and it would have allowed for its expansion. By bringing the two institutions together researchers into Cornwall’s past would be able easily to visit both establishments instead of making separate trips to Truro and Redruth. In addition to saving car trips, the proposed location was within a hundred metres of Redruth’s railway station and bus stops. More people working in and visiting Redruth would also lead to more money spent in local shops, struggling to stay afloat in the face of competition from out of town shopping centres and Truro. In the longer term this may have created the critical mass for a future specialist role for Redruth, building on its cultural assets in terms of Cornish heritage and history.

All in all a rare example of what real regeneration might mean. In fact too good to be true. And so it has turned out.

There was only one problem with the scheme - the land had been bought by a private developer, McCarthy and Stone, who are Bournemouth based specialists in ‘private retirement homes’. With projects already under way at Camborne, Newquay, Wadebridge and Launceston this company (whose principal stakeholder is the Halifax and Bank of Scotland, together with London property investors David and Simon Reuben and whose pre-tax profits in the six months to February 2006 were £39 million) was keen to build another of its apartment blocks in Redruth.

Nonetheless, with the help of Kerrier Council, a land swap was proposed whereby the Council would exchange another car park 200 metres up the hill for the Market car park, site of the proposed new Record Office. Things appeared to be going smoothly. All that was needed was for CPR Regeneration and their backers the Regional Development Agency to put the financial package in place to fund the project.

However, this deal, if ever there was really was a deal, has collapsed. With unseemly haste McCarthy and Stone have now closed off the car park and the diggers are already at work. Redruth will have 50 retirement apartments but no permanent jobs and no throughput of visitors to the town. Meanwhile the Record Office will have to stay in its current unsatisfactory home.

Why has this, one of the few examples of regeneration that potentially involved something more than merely building massive numbers of houses to accommodate an incoming population, fallen through? There are four potential candidates on which to pin the blame. First, McCarthy and Stone. Why was this company unwilling to accept the land swap? And why have they suddenly pushed forward with the building when nothing has happened for months previously?

Second, CPR Regeneration, already under mounting criticism over its protracted never-ending ‘improvements’ in Redruth that have turned the middle of the town into a permanent building site for over a year. CPR Regeneration is backed by its big brother the Regional Development Agency. The West Briton has reported that the RDA was unsuccessfully trying to buy the site from McCarthy and Stone and we hear they were offering the ‘market value’. So if true why did this fail? And when was the decision taken to buy the site rather than energetically pursue the land swap?

Finally, there is Cornwall County Council. Local intelligence suggests that a policy vacuum has appeared in the transition to a unitary authority and that County Council policy on the relocation of the Record Office was ambiguous.

Whoever should shoulder the blame there has been precious little transparency about all this. Private developers are involved in secretive deals or non-deals with the RDA based at Bristol, while the County Council (based at Truro) dithers. Meanwhile, only rumours and hearsay are reported in the press and the people of Redruth are kept firmly in the dark until the damage is done.

This shambles is nothing short of a scandal. Outside private developers backed by the power of one of Britain’s biggest banks are allowed to build retirement apartments (and how many Redruth people will be buying these?) irrespective of the much greater regeneration benefits that would flow to the local community from a coherent and planned development in the heart of the town. Contrast this mess with the use of compulsory purchase orders when a house or a farm needs to be demolished to make way for a new by-pass or for the so-called ‘Heartlands project’ at Pool. Why could compulsory purchase not be used in this case for the benefit of the community? It is also a travesty of democracy that the people of Redruth were not informed of what was happening until it was apparently too late.

Local residents might be forgiven for wondering whether this outcome is actually preferred by those for whom regeneration in the absence of real planning appears to mean just dumping thousands of houses in the area and putting profits into the pockets of large house builders and landlords. Is it actually the long term intention to transform Redruth into a dormitory town for Truro, a sleep and ride facility without shops, which are moved eastwards to Pool and westwards to Truro?

Published 17 February 2008