Three Main Issues
Having read through many of the comments posted here three issues come up again and again and I agree with their importance.
Tourism and is it beneficial?
Clearly Cornwall will always have a tourist industry and it is an important part of the economy of the county. However we have lost sight of the old saying "you can have too much of a good thing". The present C-19 lockdown has exposed the fragility of a tourist based economy, not just here but around the world. Did we have too many tourists looking back to last year? Its impossible to be completely objective, but to me the answer is that we were heavily over touristed in the high season summer but with good space available at all other times. Others have commented on the Kynance Cove nightmare and everyone could add their own example. This spoils the experience for everyone, residents and tourists alike. We need Visit Cornwall to stop promoting and targeting ever greater summer trade, indeed it really doesn't need promoting at all, and concentrate on the market outside these months. There are plenty of attractions and charities, particularly animal rescues, that would welcome off peak visitors who would have a much higher quality experience with fewer people around.
Second / holiday homes
Always controversial and the problem comes back to the fact that economists and defenders always point to the supposed money benefits but the real costs are hard to measure and convert to cash. They are very real and my view is that second / holiday homes are totally destructive to the community. Second home owners do not crew or launch lifeboats, volunteer for coastguard rescue, volunteer for National Coastwatch, run youth programmes, run sports clubs for all ages and generally do all the things that turn a collection of people into a community. Add your own activities its not anywhere near an exhaustive list. The problem is compounded by the fact that the most popular properties for second / holiday homes are the village properties close to where the activities take place. Sadly this is a problem CC can do little about on its own but it is not just a Cornish problem. We should contact and seek common cause with other affected areas such as Devon, Dorset and Somerset locally together with probably Hampshire, Lake District, East Anglia and any other to lobby Westminster for powers to at least make these properties contribute an amount reflecting the damage they cause.
Over Development on Farmland
Surely one of the greatest lessons of the C-19 problem is the necessity to shorten our supply lines and become more self reliant. It should also be remembered that the long taken for granted workers in the food supply chain suddenly became critical workers. Put this together with the necessity to rebalance our economy and destroying farmland for housing suddenly looks very stupid indeed. We need to direct much greater effort into ensuring the health of our basic industries. Cornwall is has enormous potential in fishing, farming and food generally. If the government sticks to its guns we should have much more fish to go after so lets live up to our singing and get back to basics. There are good jobs to be had that do not vanish. Of course we need to also encourage all industry, marine and engineering as well as the opportunities brought about by high speed broadband and the forced adoption of home working. What can CC do about this? We are all fed up with planning inspectors passing schemes with a theme of "yes it will be damaging but the economic benefits outweigh the costs" "In whose world?" you may ask. What CC can do is not provide any cash for infrastructue to enable development, yes I am talking about Langarth. It is a simple fact that if a developer can find a council mug enough to subsidise their development that money finds it way straight to the bottom line in the accounts and a large chunk of that goes into the director's bonus pot. The most famous example being Persimmon where one individual was intially awarded a 100 million pound bonus in one year (I typed that to emphasise it is not an error). Any CC councillor thinking of voting to subsidise any development needs to look a member of the next generation in the face and ask if they are happy to be put on the hook with their children to pay bonuses to development company directors to build houses that are too expensive for most of them to buy. So if we cannot resist the planners we can insist that dvelopments pay the entirety of their own costs. If the development is viable and required this will be no problem, if it is not it will not happen and a good thing too.
If anyone has got this far, apologies. I have gone on longer than intended and thank you for staying with me.