EXCLUSION and special protest zones will be set up in Falmouth harbour during the G7 summit, Devon and Cornwall Police have revealed.

At a Facebook Live event last night, organisers of the G7 summit in Cornwall said they are "under no illusion" there will be protests over the event when it starts on June 11-13 at Carbis Bay.

Over 1,000 journalists are expected to descend on the media centre at the Maritime Museum in Falmouth in June making it the ideal place to have protests with the world's media watching.

Protests by land and sea are expected at Falmouth and Carbis Bay where leaders from the UK, US, Germany, France, Canada, Italy and Japan, who make up the G7, and leaders from Australia, India, South Korea and the EU will meet.

On land, designated protest sites have been set aside in Falmouth's Church Street car park and Lemon Quay in Truro.

Chf Supt Matt Longman, of Devon and Cornwall Police, said they were planning for water protests and will be using staff from all over the UK with lots of different skills to get the best expertise there is to deal with the marine side of things.

"So we expect there to be some protests," he said. "What we will try and work on is whether there is an area in and around Falmouth, it is not one of the confirmed sites [for protest], but we will do all we can to get a designated area somewhere on the water in Falmouth where people can make a water protest and there will also be an application for exclusion zones either in the use of areas like the harbours."

He said people can expect to see action around those areas but it won't be intrusive and they were 'quite pragmatic' about the fact that people are going to want to use the water. "We will just make it really clear what those restrictions are and what people can do and cannot do," he said.

Last year Extinction Rebellion staged protests in Falmouth harbour projecting anti-pollution slogans onto the side of The World liner when it was moored up at the docks.

Chf Insp Longman said the police were not there to stop protests at all but said it was an opportunity for people to come along and have their voices heard. "What we want to do is make sure that works safely and peacefully," he said.

"But we can't let it interfere with the security overall at the event but most importantly we must look after everybody safely and that includes the protestors and my officers."

He said the protestors wanted huge protests with a 'massive' impact but there was no intelligence to suggest that any of them would be violent but, if they were, they had the resources to deal with it. Staff liaison offers were there to engage with protestors through community channels and they were urged to take up that offer.

Protests were expected in Falmouth, Truro, Exeter and Plymouth as well as Carbis Bay.

They said a dedicated email address had been set up - g7protest@cornwall.gov.uk - to liaise with protesters and offer advice.

Coronavirus rules would apply as they did for the rest of the country during the summit.