THE developer behind controversial student flats being built in the centre of Falmouth has been accused to 'trying to make money by the back door' after applying to let the rooms out to holidaymakers during the summer break.

At a meeting of Falmouth Town Council's planning committee on Monday night, concerns were raised about the application from Falmouth Property Developments for the 112 bed student accommodation currently being built on Fish Strand Quay.

The company wants to vary condition 5 to allow it to rent out the accommodation to other students from all over the world during the summer holidays.

Objector and nearby resident Roland Tongue told councillors that he'd only found out about the variation application by accident the previous day and said he'd had no notification coming through at all.

"The steelworks are going up but we never wanted this development," he said. "I suspect it's all about the bottom line of the developer but maybe that is just cynicism on my part."

He said the two main causes of concern were parking and noise.

"Parking is a complete nightmare for residents to park on the road," he said. "At the moment, there is quite a lot of illegal parking.

"Often the emergency vehicles can't get through. Very sadly our next door neighbour had, what turned out to be, a fatal stroke and the emergency services couldn't get through. Two fire engines, a police car and an ambulance couldn't get close, ended up with the neighbour being carried through the streets to the ambulance.

"How 112 holidaymakers can be expected to arrive without cars beats me."

He said 112 rooms with unsupervised students holidaying will produce a lot of noise and there are a lot of neighbours within feet of the building.

"When the original appeal went in [against refusal] it was on the understanding that the students wouldn't bring cars. I don't see how that can apply to holidaymakers or students from other academic institutions which is what it says on the application. Could be A level or GCSE nothing about their age. We are 'befuzzled' and thoroughly against it."

An computer generated image of what the flats will look like

A computer generated image of what the flats will look like

Cornwall Councillor Jayne Kirkham said it wasn't clear from the application what they were exactly asking for and she was really concerned about it.

"If they are asking students to attend courses at the university over the holidays that's a different matter to people just coming and having a holiday," she said. "It's confusing."

Falmouth mayor Steve Eva told the council it was simply a case of the company trying to make money by the back door.

"We have got a lot of holiday trade or people offering holiday accommodation which are going out of business because the university campus can take in 2,000 people and it is wrong. It has not even been built yet and they want to change the condition. I think we should refuse it."

This is the second time the company has tried to vary the condition to allow holidaymakers to stay at the site. An application in March of last year was refused after objections from the council and local residents

Planning permission for the controversial scheme was first granted on appeal in 2017 after a long battle with both Falmouth town and Cornwall councils and local residents.

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Falmouth Property Development Ltd have been contacted for a comment.