Sharing the benefit of our beautiful area

I think I have been very fortunate to live in Cornwall during the lockdown.Our community has come together and neighbours are friendly and supportive.We are lucky to have relatively easy access to open country paths and this has been a big plus.Our coastal path may be the jewel in the crown but our network of rural country paths is a great asset and much less busy.To be able to invest some resources into better maintaining and proactively extending this network would be a good investment for mental health and general wellbeing.Perhaps supporting the occasional and appropriately located piece of outdoor gym equipment would encourage exercise and have the potential to keep the younger generation entertained.

Our cycling infrastructure is still poor and too focused on lines painted on the side of major roads.Commuting routes between our main towns and linking villages, schools and surgeries would be a fantastic long term investment, does not have to be unattractive tarmac and could involve the community in assisting with the planning design and construction.

You also realise how important your local assets are, the shop, the post Office where we have them and the pubs we miss using.The village hall car park has been a great location for small catering businesses to continue to sell their products and the lack of other options have meant we have taken advantage of the diversification of some local cafe's into take aways.These are all assets that need protection and support.

Support is of course not just money, but money does help and precious little goes into extending our local community infrastructure.The Community Infrastructure Levy CIL which was supported by government to help local communities get contributions from housing and other developments to support local infrastructure doesn't seem to be working effectively.So called 'self build' open market homes of significant size and market value appear to be exempt and that is often the vast majority of rural development in our villages.There does not appear to be a clawback when they are resold on the open market very quickly, so our villages get new full of new development but little or no contribution to community facilities.A fairer contribution would allow communities to establish community parks, orchards, allotments as well as give a helping hand to village halls, playgrounds and playing fields.These are the community assets that have had precious little investment in recent years.

Cornwall needs to look close to home to recognise what is important