1^st June 2011

Hadrian Pigott

The word ‘seafront’ doesn’t really do justice to the variety of ways that Penzance meets the sea - The Harbour and its granite piers, the Battery Rocks and beach, the Jubilee Pool, and the Promenade. You can range around these places in your minds eye, and each is distinct and delightful in its own way, and each is connected with the other. And in the back row we have the Dry Dock, Trinity House, the Pz Gallery/Coinagehall/St Anthony’s Chapel site, and St Anthony’s Gardens.

Penzance is a wonderful town, and what makes it so special is its varied and dynamic ‘front with the sea’. The sea front is one of our greatest assets. But it is also one of the town’s greatest challenges and will continue to be so for many years, as it comes under increasing pressure from regeneration development, conservation requirements and from the need to enhance our sea defences in the face of global warming and sea level rise.

This is why we are here tonight, to begin the process of responding to those challenges in an open, imaginative and intelligent way. And more that this, we are here to explore the idea of enabling ourselves to respond collectively and cohesively, and wherever possible with one community voice.

It is clear that without a strong and reasoned collective voice, the views and ambitions of the community will not be heard. If the town continues to fight amongst itself, like a bunch of marooned pirates on a desert island fighting over treasure, it is clear that greater forces on the outside will decide our fate for us, and we can be sure that those decisions will frequently cause outrage and uproar, and lead ultimately to disappointment and a diminished town.

It doesn’t have to be like this however. Communities can and do work together to define an in-depth and far-sighted vision of what they want their town and environment to be.

The seafront community trust initiative is a step towards creating that vision.

 

A development trust is a well-tested and successful model for community empowerment and regeneration. They are inclusive, independent, community owned and managed organisations. They must be ultimately self-financing and profitable, but profits are re-invested back into the community. They work using partnerships and alliances between the community and the voluntary, private and public sectors, and are specifically engaged in the economic, environmental and social regeneration of a defined geographical area. Development trusts create wealth in communities – and keep it there!

 

A Penzance Seafront development trust would be a local champion and caretaker for the seafront and would actively seek out and co-ordinate both public and private investment in the area.

 

Part of the trusts activity would be a community-led centre for planning and best practice in respect of future developments. Such a planning forum would provide a more cohesive community voice on planning and urban design issues in the complex but contained area of the seafront, with reference to the AECOM Area Framework Plan and beyond. This is not an automatic 'say no' initiative by any means. The aim is to explore options and educate ourselves, and to draw rational and reasoned conclusions which can be communicated to Cornwall Council and/or the private sector to facilitate change and regeneration.

 

However, as Peter Jones of Locality explains “Those groups that have setup a forum style organisation to undertake community planning and information have quite quickly fizzled out or become nothing more than a talking shop or a lobby group, and not a development trust.” A planning forum alone is not sustainable. “ Community led planning needs to dovetail with community enterprise and where this has been most successful this has been underpinned by the community ownership [and management] of assets ”

 

Most of the sites and structures that make up the seafront area are public assets held by Cornwall Council. “So, community ownership of what assets?” I hear you ask. This is a key question, but one to which there is no direct answer this evening. Finding the answer would be part of the work of the steering committee of the emerging trust, as it defined its vision of how it would work in and for the community. The answer is dependent on the ambitions of the trust, but also on the trust’s ability to bring the business and social community with it, and its ability to work alongside the Town Council and Cornwall Council to make it happen.

Here’s Peter Jones again: “The new Localism Bill will make it easier for communities to request the right to run services and take on assets if they think they can do it better. Locality can help you through […] our Asset Transfer Unit. If you are seriously interested in [an] asset in the area, and can develop an outline business case we would be willing to try and facilitate discussions with Cornwall Council as part of the Assets work that we are currently undertaking with them at the moment”

There are inspiring examples where this approach has worked for other communities, including the successful if modest Amble Harbour in Northumberland.

 

More recently there is the ambitious proposal from the Dover Peoples Port Trust, set up as a community sponsored charitable Industrial and Provident Society in response to the Prime Minister's Big Society challenge to local communities to take over and run public services, local assets and businesses.

 

Consistent with these Big Society objectives, the Trust has made a credible and competitive offer for the Port of Dover, such that Transport Secretary Philip Hammond has called a halt to the Dover Harbour Board’s plans to privatise the port and sell it to overseas investors.

 

‘The [Peoples Port] Trust recognises that the Port of Dover is an asset of national importance and fundamental to the trade and transport links of the United Kingdom. However, the Trust also intends to operate the Port in the interests of the stakeholders, namely the people and community of Dover, local authorities, local business, port users and port employees.’

 

Closer to home, our own Town Council is also exploring asset transfer as a possible means to safeguard the future of the town, and we will hear more about this shortly from Jan Ruhrmund. If this seafront trust initiative progresses, then very close cooperation with the Town Council will be essential. And in fact, the interim steering group that might come together out of this evening’s meeting is invited to present its early ideas to a full session of the Town Council on the 6^th June.

 

Imagine representatives from all the organisations in this room standing before the Town Council saying “We want change to be driven by the community and are prepared to work with you to make this happen!” Things are moving fast, and the community shouldn’t get left behind…

 

The aim of this exploratory meeting is to form an interim steering group to advance the Penzance Seafront trust initiative.

 

There are two challenges for that interim steering group:

 

1) The first is to bring together a formal steering committee to define the scope of what the Penzance Seafront community trust might achieve in the medium and long term, and begin the process of setting up the organisation to do it. This will involve defining the vision of the trust, drawing up a constitution and business plan for any assets and activities, securing funding and building membership etc.

 

2) The second challenge is to create a focused working group to immediately set up an effective Penzance Seafront Planning Forum as outlined above. It would become a key part of community trust once constituted. This part of the project should run parallel with the set-up of the trust, but it needs to be fast-tracked, because there are planning proposals and decisions being made right now that will permanently affect the town and its physical, social and economic environment. At the moment, the community is unprepared for what is coming.

 

In a sense the emerging development trust will have to run before it can walk. But if it has the formal support and participation of the majority of organisations in this room, and of the wider community, it will have weight and power even before it is finally constituted, and its voice will be heard.

 

The hoped-for outcome of this meeting is that enough people will come forward to contribute time, skills, imagination and resources to form an interim steering group for the development trust. There will be a lot to do, but it’s not all drudgery; it’s an opportunity to learn about ourselves, about our history, an opportunity to understand our collective and complex present and to help create a bright and resilient future for Penzance.

 

 

Hadrian Pigott.