Scullduggery roolz at Newham?

‘They’re gonna do what they wanna do because that’s what they do!’

‘Tombstone, Arizona. 1881, The Clantons and others ride into town. Wyatt Earp and his brothers are joined by Doc Holliday. The gunfight lasted a minute. It remains an almost mythical clash between law and disorder.’

The A39 is a very ancient track. It runs from the first ferry point of the Cornish border (Saltash) , down the South coast, linking Plymouth, Liskeard, St Austell, Truro, Penryn/Falmouth, Helston and Penzance – it also links HMS Raleigh, Liskeard livestock market, the China Clay industry, the Crown Court, Cathedral, Lys Kernow, Truro College, Cornwall’s major theatre and only District General Hospital (all at Truro), the University of Cornwall (let’s call it what it is!) at Tremough, Falmouth Docks, RNAS Culdrose (the closest UK military base to Africa!) and the main engine maintenance facility for the railway in the south at Long Rock, Penzance. And then, in its scattered way, the south coast and inland visitor trade. As well as being host to key institutions, these are long-standing key economic centres of the Cornish economy. The A390 links to the A30 from Arch Hill, Truro. These two interlinked roads are, taken together, the busiest route in Cornwall, transporting the greatest value, and facilitating life, occupation, care and culture for a very significant chunk of the Cornish population.

The Truro by-pass (Morlaix Avenue, as it is deceptively known) was built in the 1960s to take traffic out of the route from Ferris Town, through River Street, St Nicholas Street, Boscawen Street, Quay Street, which was, at the time, the A39/390. This did not totally exclude traffic from the town centre, but it did substantively improve the environment (all the buildings were black; sandstone was corroding; the air quality was toxic; the town was in decline) and set up Truro for its emergence as a major Cornish retail and service centre. If you want to measure the sustainability and quality of Truro’s success, just ask yourself why Boscawen Street is the location for five (yes 5) high street banks!

So economic success, access for its customer base, connectivity with key suppliers and resources, all rely on the traffic management of the A39/390.

All of which feeds the acutely critical question: Why has Cornwall Council allowed (and not strongly opposed) the creation of a mountainous access for the unseemly development atop Newham Hill? Why, as I vigorously challenged at the time, and found myself being treated rudely and dismissively by officials, not simply use Higher Newham Lane, the same access as the former farm.

As the scale of the incursion from the by-pass into the hillside has become revealed (and we watch yet another exercise in earth-moving machismo making mountains and ravines where we once had landscape rooted in geology and contours) and incredulity has gaped jaws, scratched scalps and struck dumb those whose experience suggests that there’s no point in saying anything because nobody listens – ‘They’re gonna do what they wanna do because that’s what they do!’

But what is happening is madness! So much so, that, when the developer at Higher Newham came to the Council asking for a ‘temporary access’ at the top of Lighterage Hill (past Tregagle’s Deep Meat Store) everybody thought that it was a practical measure to avoid using Truro by-pass as the ‘Works Entrance’. But! What if the developers also perceive that the by-pass access is difficult, and may prove to be a deterrent to potential purchasers of the properties they are building, and they are intending to use Lighterage Hill as a second access to their development?

I try very hard to avoid being cynical; it is such an easy way of opting out of thinking and contributing! But, as the photos show, the layout and fixtures inside the site at Lighterage Hill seem very suburban for a ‘works entrance’. Is the developer intending to quietly provide a second entry to the hilltop estate? If so, why did they not say so? Why did the Council allow Lighterage Hill when it could/should have utilized the traditional farm entrance at Higher Newham Lane, with its track going right to the heart of the farmland?

What about the consequences?

Well! The most popular proposal of the ‘Town Deal Programme’ is the proposed bridge between Lighterage Quay and Boscawen Park. The most vexed and seemingly intractable aspect of this project (other, of course, than money!) is how to get users across the road from the Newham Ttrail, which links Highertown (including Malabar) to the bridge, thereby offering a large chunk of Truro’s community a new and safe opportunity to use Boscawen Park (including the Cricket Ground, tennis courts, play area, duck pond, pitches, and café).

The sticking point, which finds Cornwall Council at loggerheads with Newham BID, is the proposal to provide a pedestrian crossing at the bottom of Lighterage Hill. Objectors, which include Truro City Council, the BID and the local CC member for Highertown, all think this is unnecessarily dangerous. There are studies and counter studies, meetings and stand-offs!

But, have the various audits, projections, plans and drafts considered the possibility that Lighterage Hill may soon have added to its already varied and workmanlike day a good number of residents coming and going up and down the hill? Why has the Higher Newham developer installed such a posh-looking works entrance? Why add to the problems at Lighterage Hill and not insist on the use of Higher Newham Lane?

When I was Transport Portfolio I disagreed with officers and spoke at planning meetings about the proposal to inflict the Higher Newham entrance on the Truro by-pass. Twice the committee sent it back, but to no avail. I haven’t met anybody during the ten or more years this debate has been going on who thinks that having an on-demand pedestrian crossing over four carriageways of the busiest economic route in Cornwall is dangerous, un-productive, disruptive and well…just plain stupid!

My guess is that the forthcoming residents of Higher Newham will agree, and will want to be using any other option to come and go – so Lighterage Hill is likely to find itself cluttered up with much more traffic than it currently services, if that ‘ntrance’ is left by Planning and Highways to evolve – a good approach to planning? I should cocoa!

What can be done? Well! All the protests have failed! The developer has flexed his muscle, and the access is nearing its mountainous completion. There will be congestion caused by it, even though one of Cornwall Council’s key strategic priorities has been to invest in sophisticated traffic management technology (including park and ride) to improve journey times along this critical corridor. One might quite seriously argue that this development should never have been given consent, partly because Higher Newham was a key part of Truro’s distinctive setting, a green lung, and partly because getting into and out of it seems beyond common sense to achieve. Those of us who tried to fight it were ridden over roughshod. So, its underway! There is a cavernous cutting splicing Truro by-pass; perceptions of Truro as being difficult to get to will be intensified, which will, in turn affect long-term economic resilience, and the planning system will ride out of town with its head held high, chuckling to itself about another shootout successfully fought and won!

Oh! And Mrs Rayner wants to increase to 80,000 the number of houses built in Cornwall in the next decade! She’s going to have to shift H & E (Heaven and Earth) to get that done but, take a look around, there’s machines which remodel the planet in a morning, so H & E will be an un-civil engineering doddle!

Bert Biscoe 21/07/2025