Are we reaching ‘Peak Cornwall’ already?

NEXT month, the world’s most powerful leaders will descend on the Duchy for the 47th G7 Summit. Who would have believed that US President Joe Biden’s first visit to the UK would be to Carbis Bay? It’s only slightly more plausible than Elvis rocking up in Camborne (on the train on a Wednesday).

The meeting, which was announced out of the blue in January, has thrust what was once a nearforgotten outpost of the British Isles onto the world stage.

Cornwall was a county that was once named among the poorest in Europe. It was a place where the collapse of the mining industry had left pockets of serious deprivation and where its relative isolation and poor transport links had cast it far from the minds of the Westminster elite.

Since 1999, Cornwall has accessed £765million in EU funding after being granted Objective One status. The funds helped build the Eden Project, develop Cornwall Airport Newquay and create the Combined Universities in Cornwall. EU funding was also behind the Superfast broadband project, improvements to the

A30 and numerous start-up programmes, innovation centres and skills development projects that have had a major impact on prospects and prosperity.

Thanks in part to the investment in infrastructure, over the past decade, Cornwall has cemented itself as the UK’s leading tourist destination (it won the UK’s Favourite Holiday Destination awards in the British Travel Awards nine years in a row).

But more than that, Cornwall now boasts the fastest broadband in the country which makes it a haven for microbusinesses, especially those suited to working from home and focused upon digital innovation. It has transport links that we could only dream of 20 years ago with direct flights to London and dual carriageway all the way to Truro (soon to be developed as far as Hayle). And it is about to become home to the UK’s first horizontal launch Spaceport.

Now, overlooking one of the Duchy’s most beautiful private white sand beaches and turquoise waters, a gathering of German Chancellor Angela Merkel; French President Emmanuel Macron; and the Prime Ministers of Canada, Justin Trudeau; Italy, Mario Draghi; and Japan, Yoshihide Suga; will join Boris Johnson and the POTUS to discuss world politics, economics, climate change and the pandemic.

Earlier this year, the British architecture magazine Building Design speculated that we may have passed ‘Peak London’. The pandemic has stripped London of its tourists, its office workers and its high street shops as people retreat to home working, online shopping and crowd avoidance. Brexit has plundered the capital of its foreign-born residents, with an estimated 700,000 having left the city since 2019.

Cornwall is on the opposite end of that equation. It feels as though many of the crowds leaving London are flocking to Cornwall. According to Rightmove, Cornwall has overtaken London as the most searched for place to live for UK movers. The property market has exploded, with people buying homes without even seeing them in person.

It’s no longer just local people who’ve been priced out of their hometowns. Many would say you need London wages to live in St Ives these days.

And it’s not just the cost of living in Cornwall, but the price of a holiday there that’s threatening to exclude all but the wealthiest. One night in a standard room in the Carbis Bay Hotel, where the G7 Summit is meeting, will set you back a minimum of £500 in May or June.

By July, there’s virtually nothing available to book other than their villa – at an eye-watering £3,500 a night.

And so it feels as though we’re reaching Peak Cornwall for a very different reason. While London’s emptying, Cornwall is filling up.

There are no more homes – the housing shortage continues to be an issue for Cornwall. There’s only one main hospital – and it already gets entirely overwhelmed both in summer and winter.

There are only so many campsites and hotels and holiday parks for holidaymakers to cram into in the summer. There are only so many traffic jams on the A30 we can all take.

Over the course of the summer, the longer term impact on Cornwall’s infrastructure, its social mobility and its cultural heritage, in particular, is going to be the subject of no little scrutiny and commentary.

The Duchy needs the investment in infrastructure that’s no longer coming from the EU to be instead accorded by the government to help it keep up with its growing popularity and audience on a global scale.

This summer should not mark Peak Cornwall. This should be the start of a new era of growth and opportunity for the Duchy.

But it’s crucial that the G7 is used to create a lasting legacy for Cornwall that will help it continue to grow and not hit its peak over one heady summer when the President of the United States came to Carbis Bay.

It’s crucial that the G7 is used to create a lasting legacy for Cornwall that will help it continue to grow and not hit its peak over one heady summer