Hooray. Woohoo. Back of the net. Get in. In yer face!!! And any other expressions you can add to that list. At long, long last, after over a year, we have planning permission to put 2 lakeside holiday homes onto our land. HOORAY!!!!
Whee!! Splash…
It’s been a long journey, but we never gave up the faith. On Monday, Jim and I had a nerve-racking visit to Penzance to put forward our case at the West Cornwall Planning Committee. The Council’s Planning Officers were firmly still saying no to our application. But luckily we had great support locally which gave us a “second chance” with a spot at the Council’s Committee meeting.
It was indeed squeaky bum time as we had just 3 minutes to present our case to the Committee of 15 Councillors in an alarming room full of microphones and serious people in suits. I spoke on our behalf. Apparently being a female speaker in a room full of gents of a certain age can get you a sympathy vote. If it helps our cause then whatever! And we were also very lucky to have representatives from both our parish councils and our two local Councillors speak for us as well.
With all that support, the Committee voted in our favour 14 to 1. Which means that YES we finally have official planning permission for Pengelly Retreat. Jim and I weren’t sure whether Committee meeting protocol allows jumping up and down and shouting “GET IN”. So we sat quiet, grinned a lot and jumped around afterwards.
I’ve got a digger and I’m not afraid to use it..
We still have a few hurdles to leap. We now need to get a Flood Risk Report for our land and ensure that the Environment Agency are satisfied our plans comply with their regulations. That’s underway and we are anticipating some to-ing and fro-ing before we can finally begin the build. But still, this is a massive step forward.
Grass not mud!
Nice neat borders
And on that happy note, I’ve leave you to enjoy the above photos of progress made on the gardens at Pengelly. We have grass in our back garden, not mud, hooray. Work has started on neatening the front gardens with edging and flowerbeds ready for plants to go in. And Jim with help of (Zoe’s) Jim and many wheelbarrows of clay has fixed the leaky weir so the lake is filling up again and perfect for swimming.
Happy Day-sies at nearby Godolphin
More Postcards from actual “Pengelly Retreat” to follow 🙂