To profit or to protect? Can planning officers really ignore a document that details the extensive development and potential £4.8m sell-off of one of Cornwall’s most protected and loved AONB’s?
On 29th January the public comments closed on Cornwall Council’s website for planning application no PA21/11384, with a final count of 167 objections and 6 supporters. The applicant is the Meudon Hotel, a well-known 20-acre country estate, just outside the small but growing village of Mawnan Smith on the south coast of Cornwall. The hotel, in the same family ownership since the 60’s, was sold at the height of the pandemic and bought by seasoned operators ‘Kingfisher Resorts’. The plans put forward are for a new restaurant, fitness suite, swimming pool and 10 luxury villas (all with sea views), that dot through the wooded valley down to the secluded cove at the bottom. The villas are to be sold to private investors and leased back to the hotel. Also proposed is the development of an adjoining nine-acre agricultural field which overlooks the bay, included in the sale of the hotel, into a biodiversity area.
The entire area is within an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), one of the highest environmental protections within Europe, an area where all proposals for major development (for that’s what this is) "will be refused except in exceptional circumstances and where it can be demonstrated that they are in the public interest”.(Cornwall local plan)
The plans have stunned and caused outrage in the local community. The normal issues like traffic congestion, road safety, overcrowding, sewage etc have all been well voiced, but the real anger at this development is focused on Kingfisher’s intention to unlock the real estate value of a highly protected area and build what they see as a luxury housing development, the 10 villas, under the guise of a tourist operation. They argue that Kingfisher’s plan is to create something much bigger than has been put forward in the present planning application and that the end game is to build an additional 14 villas across the nine acre field, privatise the much loved cove and build a beach bar. Then sell it all in 6 years at a huge profit.
What makes this situation different is this is not a community acting on hearsay or spreading idle gossip; this is a community who have the investment deck circulated on behalf of Kingfisher to attract the funding for the entire scheme. It’s a blow-by-blow account of the self-titled ‘luxury hotel resort developer’s’ intentions:
“The hotel has extensive further development potential which we plan to fully unlock, (…).”
The Company will seek to secure planning permission for construction of up to 24 luxury holiday villas
The villas (...) on sale could generate substantial developmental profits for the Company
The villas will be sold (..) to private buyers under a sale and leaseback arrangement. This will allow the Company to realise the development profit (…) (considered to be in excess of £200k per villa) ..."
The conflict goes to the very heart of the issue that affects so many areas; how much say should a community have over its development? And in today’s climate, does profit triumph over protections?
The Meudon investment opportunity, with the development of the real estate as it’s headline, has the local population questioning how it is that people who have no genuine interest in the area, community or environment, are able to extract value from a piece of land that is supposed to be protected by one of the strongest designations in Europe, that no private owner or housebuilder would ever get planning permission for, impact the enjoyment of the area for everyone who lives here, then take the money and cut and run with millions of pounds? It seems anything but “within the public interests”.
However, the planning officers will never see the investment document. And even if the document were to find its way across their desk, they cannot take it into account when considering the planning application. They must look at it in isolation with the National Planning Policy Framework and any additional relevant policies; it’s the rules. The approach seems counterintuitive when the inclusion of the nine-acre field in the development boundary, and its change of use into a bio-diversity area, will make it easier it to achieve planning for residential plots later down the line.
So, should planning officers follow the rules? Or is it within the public and environmental interests to look at the document and take it into account?
Kingfisher’s plans for the Meudon essentially come down to this: raise £4 million to buy a hotel and 20 acres of grounds situated on the Cornish coast. Refurbish it, add a swimming pool, more dining options and build, to start with, 12 new luxury villas that will be sold off plan, netting the hotel’s investors around £2.4m profit or 50% of their money back plus interest, before the hotel has essentially opened its doors. This increases to over £4.8million if they build and sell the 24 as planned; essentially getting the hotel and grounds for free, along with nearly £1 million profit, on the back of the luxury private housing estate it has been able build within the AONB. Then, in around 2026, they sell up for what will lead to an additional £5.5 million profit. More if they have been able to build 24 villas on top of the initial 10 proposed in this first application.
Maybe money really does grow on trees.
If the planning officers give the villas their stamp of approval, those 10- 24 small parcels of land go from being worth virtually nothing to being valued at well over £200,000 each, before a spade even breaks the earth open. The rare opportunity to buy a full residential property within the AONB, on the coast with a private beach, is guaranteed to bring in the big bucks.
For companies like Kingfisher, this form of development seems to be central to their business model. They own several other resorts including the Una in St Ives where a 55 unit ‘aparthotel’ and 93 individual villas were granted planning in 2018. Work has started this year and the villas will also be sold and leased back to the hotel, with a guaranteed 4.5% ROI and 6 weeks use a year for the owners. A more recent application by the resort to change the hotel’s self-contained apartments from C1 (hotel use) to C3 (residential use) was submitted to Cornwall Council on 1st February this year.
At Mawnan’s January Parish Council meeting the planning consultants working on behalf of the Meudon stated the villas are vital to the business model; this type of accommodation is what the market demands nowadays and the financial survival of the hotel hinges upon having this offering. It doesn’t mention this in the investment document. It does link the success of the company to selling the villas to investor returns and development value but not the overall viability of the company itself. Councillors voted not to support the scheme but some say this will have little bearing on what the county planners decide.
Look a little bit closer at the Meudon investment deck and it does look like the motivation for the purchase of the hotel was the prospect of the development of residential real estate. 51% of the initial £4million needed was provided by Kingfisher themselves via the Una Resort. If all goes to plan, from just 12 villas, Kingfisher could double their £2 million investment into over £4 million in just 5 years.
The real winners, however, are what’s called ‘Management’; they provide services to the Meudon for a fee which is charged based on the turnover of the hotel and a % of the exit value. From just a £100,000 investment, they potentially walk away with over £3.5million. Management, incidentally, is 73% Kingfisher and 27% Armstrong. Armstrong are the creators of the investment document and responsible for the capital raise.
A final bitter pill to swallow is that Mawnan is months away from having its Neighbourhood Development Plan (NDP) voted into law via referendum, the parish having embraced the government’s call to create a clear future direction for development. Kingfisher probably couldn’t have chosen a more genuinely loved spot by the local community to develop. I dare say they have perhaps underestimated it. The parish may have the north bank of the famous Helford River but Bream Cove and next door Nansidwell, open to all for time immemorial, with the southwest coastal path running through them and across the field, is the equivalent of a coastal community centre. The fact that the investment document refers to the hotel’s ‘private cove’ 8 times has fuelled speculation the developers intend to stop locals using it.
It seems a smack in the face to years of work that the first thing passed after the NDP takes effect is essentially the first phase of one of the largest developments in an AONB seen in the vicinity. To build more second homes in an area suffering from a massive housing crisis, on protected land valuable to the community suffering from said housing crisis... it bites. Hurts. It's both a stab and a twist of the knife. Some argue the NDP supports commercial development, which this falls under, but others dispute that and say the villas are, for all intents and purposes, residential houses and the commercial section was never written with development of this nature in mind.
Whilst no one at Kingfisher has disputed the document, the planning consultants have hit back at future speculation and development of the cove and field, quoting the rules: that the community and officials can only respond to the application in front of them for 10 villas. They say they are unaware of any future plans for the field, although they admit they’ve done a topographical survey when they included it in the in the development boundary for the entire hotel complex.
Here’s my disclaimer; I’m one of the ‘locals’ and I have registered an objection to the villas and the inclusion of the field in the development boundary. Do I blame Kingfisher for what they are doing? It’s hard (!) but I try not to. I am aware that they wouldn’t try it if we didn’t have a system that allowed it. And Kingfisher are confident it will work for them:
“We believe that the team’s depth of experience in working with both challenging consultative bodies, and local planning authorities, to achieve beneficial planning consents, (….) bring an almost unique set of skills to the benefit of this project.”
For me the issue is that, when clear evidence exists of the intent to exploit protected land for money, or in fact any other information that could assist a planning application- either way, the system actively disallows it to be seen or heard. It’s like a jury not being given access to vital evidence in a case.
So... will planning officers choose to look the other way, pretend they haven’t seen it or do they have a responsibility to pay attention and take the investor deck into consideration when deliberating over their decision? How much say does a community have over its development? What does ‘public interest’ really mean?
We find out mid March when Cornwall Council announce their decision.
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