Is the National Trust doing enough to build good relationships with local people?

Councillors have voted to refuse planning permission for a new car park and pedestrian crossing at Trelissick House and Gardens at Feock near Falmouth.

The planning application is described by Cornwall Live as ‘one of the most contentious planning applications ever to be submitted in mid-Cornwall’. The National Trust wanted to create an additional 225-space car park on land where there is currently woodland and an orchard with a pedestrian crossing leading from the new car park to the house, gardens and riverside parkland.The charity said its plans were designed to stop queuing cars blocking the access road, but the managing director of a a local ferry company pointed out that traffic flow monitoring by the trust did not take into account the number of vehicles leaving the ferry to drive past Trelissick. It was feared that the narrowed road and new pedestrian crossing would delay traffic going to and from the ferry and cause queues to build up. The National Trust said that the plans had been ‘carefully considered in consultation with the local parish council, neighbours and businesses for a long time’, and yet the planning application attracted a record number of objections.