The Cornwall Towns Study

LUC has been working for Cornwall Country Council to establish how the forthcoming Regional Spatial Strategy (RSS) should deal with the county. There is no large urban area in Cornwall, and thus it presents a different strategic challenge from other parts of the region.

Nevertheless, the county contains a network of larger and smaller market towns. By using Census 2001 travel to work data and surveys of service use we have been able to establish that the network of Truro, Camborne/Redruth and Falmouth forms an effective strategic core for the county.

In terms of travel to work its overall sustainability performance is similar to that of neighbouring Plymouth. The data also shows that there is relatively little functional overlap between the two. This has led us to recommend that the three towns should be planned for in compliment as a location for strategic growth in the RSS, with the aim of achieving more sustainable communities across the three, but seen as a unified functional entity.

We will go on to make more detailed recommendations for the forthcoming LDFs using finer-grained analysis.

Such work has clear application at sub-regional and local levels for planning strategy development.