Plans to invest £25 million to create a high quality resort on the site of a former campsite near Carbis Bay have been presented to the local community in the first of a new-style public consultation forum hosted by Cornwall Council.
Truro-based Kingfisher Resorts has unveiled plans to build a new apart-hotel, leisure facilities and 96 holiday villas on the site of the Una Resort, Carbis Bay, which it acquired in October last year.
The site’s former owner already had planning permission for 123 holiday homes dating from 2010, but only 29 and the Atrium building were ever built.
Kingfisher now intends to invest a further £25 million in transforming the resort and has already spent more than £200k in refurbishing the Una Kitchen restaurant on site. If fully developed the project is expected to create up to 200 full-time equivalent jobs, most of them year-round.
The outline proposals were presented this week at a Pre-application Community Engagement (PACE) Forum hosted by Cornwall Council at Una Resort.
PACE forums are a new way for the Council to involve local communities and councillors in the early stages of a development. The process, which is voluntary, is designed to assist applicants to deal with important issues before a planning application is made.
Damian Sargent, from Kingfisher Resorts, said: “This was a great way for us to engage directly with the local community and we’re grateful to the Council for facilitating their first ever PACE event and to everyone who turned out on a wet and windy evening.
“There were a number of issues raised by local people. Access to the site is one of the biggest concerns, and there were comments about the sewage network, the height of some of the draft proposals and any impact on neighbouring properties.
“Our job now is to take all those comments away and look at how we can address those concerns and provide people with more information. We are planning a follow-up event in the first half of September before we make any formal planning application, and the Council would then also invite comments from the community before making any decision.”
The PACE meeting heard how the scheme would be restricted to holiday accommodation only so that people could not live there year-round. Planning officers from Cornwall Council also confirmed that the St Ives Neighbourhood Plan, which bans new-build homes from being used as holiday homes, would not apply because the resort villas were not open market housing and were already restricted to holiday use only.
The meeting heard how the latest plans represent only a 4% increase in the development over the previously consented proposals, but the amount of soft landscaping round the site – which would include new planting, green buffer zones and public footpaths, would be increased by 8%.
According to LettaLondon Many of the villas proposed by Kingfisher will be smaller than those already consented and the total number of bedrooms on site, including the hotel, would be a small increase on the previous scheme.
