THERE’S growing anger in West Cornwall at plans by Cornwall Council to replace a vital community hub with 72 extra care flats for people aged over 55.

Cornwall Council is proposing to build the apartments on the site of the John Daniel Centre in Penzance, which is owned by the council itself and is now a Safe & Well Hub.

Among the services currently using the building at Heamoor, just off the A30, is the celebrated Growing Links organisation which runs the Street Food Project. It provides hot meals every evening to people experiencing homelessness or living in food poverty in Penzance, one of the most deprived areas in the UK. A second building on the site is currently occupied by Nancealverne School.

There is also disquiet in the area after initial public consultation stated the care apartments would be 100 per cent affordable, only for that to be later reduced to 30 per cent. The town’s current mayor Stephen Reynolds has previously spoken out in no uncertain terms about the changes.

The council’s outline application, which was recommended for approval by its own planning department, was brought to committee yesterday (Monday, April 28) by local member Andrew George, who is also the Liberal Democrat MP for the St Ives constituency. Members of the west area planning committee voted to defer the matter for more details.

He said: “There’s something disturbingly Putin-esque when you witness a council apply to itself for permission to do something on its own land and to then ask its own lawyers to mark its homework when it’s challenged, and to hope councillors will be too busy with elections to notice what they’ve done.

“That they wanted to pass it ‘on the nod’ behind closed doors after having made significant changes to the proposal it presented to the public is alarming, and has dented my faith in the professionalism of local government officers.”

Mr George, who stands down from the council at Thursday’s elections, has vowed, as local MP, to request that the new council looks again at the project and delivers it as 100 per cent for local benefit in perpetuity.

The extra care plan is one of five proposed across the county by the local authority. Residents would live in self-contained homes, with communal facilities and access to onsite 24/7 care services. The council says the schemes will help to address the ageing demographic in the county and reduces costs and pressure on the NHS.

The council has identified the need for 576 extra care housing units in West Cornwall over the next eight years, which is separate to the need for other forms of supported housing for older people including residential care homes.

The unitary authority has made it clear that those community groups currently occupying the John Daniel Centre hub – including housing resettlement, First Light domestic violence services and a mental health team – will all be given new bases. However, some of those involved are sceptical.

Lynne Dyer, director of Growing Links, told the planning meeting: “At the moment we’re running a thriving centre for our community. We don’t know where else we would go.

“The council has said they would find somewhere else but we can’t go back to Penzance town centre because the demographic of people we have are deemed as antisocial, so the town centre doesn’t want us. We’ve been told we can’t go into St John’s Hall because of children’s services that are in there.

“To be honest, we don’t want to be back to the town anyway because we had so many complaints. Antisocial behaviour officers have said to me that crime and crime complaints have considerably fallen since we’ve moved out to this location. There isn’t a place – they looked for eight years for us for a place in Penzance, there isn’t one that’s suitable.”

She added: “The community around John Daniel have been really positive – it’s not just us, there are lots of other services that help our community. For us, it’s the perfect location but we would happily step aside if it was 100 per cent affordable and did something for the housing crisis we’re in, but I don’t think this application is that.”

There are 60 comments on the council’s online planning portal, all against the development. One of the comments sums up the feeling: “The John Daniel Centre currently hosts many amazing organisations that support the most vulnerable in our community – including the Street Food Project, Growing Links, the resettlement team, WithYou, Health4Homeless, Street Vet, the Recovery community, Steve’s Legacy, Healthy Cornwall and others.

“Because they are all under one roof, they can work together. It’s such a good model, that it’s being used as an exemplar to others. If the site is demolished, that wraparound support disappears from our community.

“Initially the 72 extra care apartments proposed were also planned to be fully affordable. It’s now only 30 per cent that will be ‘affordable’ – and, of course, the developers can change that to zero once it gets approval.”

The Mayor of Penzance told members of the final planning committee before this week’s council elections that they had an opportunity “to do something for the local people and the most vulnerable people in the community. It should either be 100 per cent affordable or carry on its community use”.