CORNWALL Council has been found in contempt and ordered to pay £35,000 costs to a Portreath resident who complained about the council blocking vehicular access by installing four bollards near her home.

In a judgement shared with us by complainant Penny Bence and reported by the Local Government Lawyer website, the council has been found in contempt by a First Tier Tribunal (FTT) in an Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) dispute about the traffic bollards, where it showed “a dismal litany of failings”.

We previously reported that Mrs Bence had complained about the council replacing a single removable bollard at Chynance, Portreath, with four fixed bollards which had the effect of preventing vehicular access to certain properties including her own. The council’s position was that the bollards were installed to prevent illegal vehicular use of the footway.

Mrs Bence argued that the bollards had prevented ambulances being able to get near the village beach to attend to injured people. She had subsequently requested various disclosures under freedom of information (FOI) legislation.

The council missed deadlines and when Mrs Bence pursued Cornwall Council for contempt, the FTT transferred the case to the Upper Tribunal stating the council’s offence was non-compliance with a substituted decision notice and with an FTT order.

During the hearing, Cornwall Council admitted contempt in not complying with the notice within the prescribed 35-day period. The tribunal additionally found the council in breach of paragraph 2(a) of the notice until July 23, 2025, which amounted to a further contempt.

Mrs Justice Heather Williams decided the appropriate penalty was publication of her decision and a costs award of £35,000 to Mrs Bence.

As reported by the Local Government Lawyer website, it emerged during the contempt hearing that the council had searched for documents on the words “compliant” – a typographical error for “complaint” – and “Chynance”, which led to so many documents that Cornwall Council claimed it would be unreasonable to trawl through all of them given the significant cost involved.

Mrs Bence argued Cornwall Council used inappropriately broad search terms, most notably in not narrowing the scope by searching “bollard”, so that a lot of irrelevant emails had been identified which the council said justified withholding information on costs grounds.

The judge found Cornwall Council had “a poor attitude towards compliance” and had been “illogical and irrational” in failing to search the word “bollard” when seeking material relevant to Mrs Bence’s application. She ruled that parts of Cornwall’s response had been “cavalier, irresponsible and unreasonable”.

She said: “Mrs Bence’s request for information was made as long ago as February 10, 2023. Even on the council’s own case, it only managed to comply with the first part of her request on July 23, 2025 and the second part of her request on March 10, 2025. This delay is all the more striking when set against the timescales for compliance prescribed by the EIR … on any view, there was very protracted delay in this case.”

She said the FTT’s substituted decision notice had been overlooked rather than intentionally ignored because Cornwall Council supplied an email address that was not monitored regularly, which was “indicative of a poor attitude towards compliance”.

The judge added: “Although I have not found all of the allegations proven, those that have been established are substantial and they reflect poorly on the council.”

She added that the failings were “avoidable and should not have happened. The council has been too ready to try and place the blame on others, in particular in making unfounded allegations against Ms Bence that were included, on instructions, in [the] skeleton argument”.

The four fixed bollards have now been removed, but Mrs Bence said she has still not been given a satisfactory response by the council as to why they were installed in the first place.

They have been replaced by two removable bollards but she says they cannot be removed due to the amount of sand in the area, and they are still blocking vehicles.

Cornwall Council has been contacted for a response to the findings.