FRIENDS OF LONG ROCK MEXICO CROSSING

https://www.facebook.com/pages/friendsoflongrockmexicocrossing/388829381211332?fref=ts

Meeting Minutes 14-10-2013 Present Rob Nance, Carolyn Trevivian, Dick Thatcher, Mike Bott, Helen Eynon, Jane Bailey, Ian Holmes, Nick Tregenza

1 Decision Going To Cornwall Council (CC) Cabinet Good news this week that the Extinguishment Order is to go before a CC Cabinet Meeting: Trelawney Room, New County Hall, Truro 10:00am Wed 27 Nov 2013

The public are allowed to observe the meeting & there are 15 minutes set aside for questions from the public. We need to contact Phil Wood in the Democracy Dept at CC to ask if anyone can speak or give a short audio-visual presentation. Think Trelawney Room has about 30 seats, so some of us might have to wait outside. There might be a larger room in the building. 2 Coach Hire Agreed we would want as many people from Long Rock to attend as possible (given that this is a working day), with our yellow ribbons. Agreed that we will hire a coach, CT to look into this & book (costs permitting).

3 Lobbying Cabinet Members All agreed that we need to win over Cabinet Members by persuading them of the arguments. It is a concern that the 10 CC Cabinet Members will not have been properly briefed on the issues around The Crossing or only briefed on Peter Marshs (PM) opinion. Cabinet Members might feel wary of not complying with the delegated officer & may be persuaded to pass the buck to The Secretary Of State (SoS). We will ask for half an hour [or more?] with each one beforehand [how far ahead?] & invite them to view the LRMC site & the alternatives [& discuss the case?]. We need a short summary with a list of organisations which support us on it. MB will do this, NT to assist. When this is done, all Cabinet Members will be written to by different FOLRMC Members & sent the summary both by email & hard copy, as follows: CT MB RT IH JB NT Julian German Jeremy Rowe, Judith Haycock Andrew Wallis, Edwina Hannaford Adam Paynter John Pollard Alex Folkes, Bert Biscoe, Geoff Brown

4 CC Discussion Of Petition We have pointed out many times to CC that a petition of 1209+ signatures is supposed to trigger a discussion in the Council, but has failed to do so. Need to find out why this hasnt happened. HE to follow up.

5 Safety Enhancements The no viable safety enhancements stance by PM is proven nonsense. HE is looking into independent expert witness testimony to confirm this (in a similar way that Prof Spiegelhalter confirmed that NTs interpretation that the risk on The Crossing is low is right.)

6 Health benefits The CC Cabinet Member with portfolio for health agreed that this should be considered. HE will send a link to other FOLRMC of the recently published Walking Works report, jointly commissioned by Macmillan Cancer Care & The Ramblers, which shows that physical inactivity is dangerous in itself: it causes death & tops smoking as one of the nations biggest health problems & shows that walking is the solution to this epidemic. JB suggested that one of our questions be related to this.

7 JB suggested that we try to attend relevant Cabinet/Council meetings - there is a diary on CCs website - & that we go prepared to engage properly with the topic of the meeting & devise questions that intersect with that topic & crossing issues (if we dont engage genuinely with the meetings central focus, this could backfire).

8 Chloe Smith/Cornishman was unable to be present this evening. She will ring RN tomorrow. RN will tell her that we are happy that this has gone to CC Cabinet, but worried about the Cabinet Members being ill-briefed & potentially passing the buck.

9 Letter From Vanessa Davies (VD) Re CC Cabinet Meeting received by all objectors. JB noted that the letter does not even mention the 150+ objection letters, suggested writing/asking question about this.

10 Illegality Of Temporary Closure MB sent a complaint some time ago re Williamson (VDs manager) & the illegality of the temporary closure, failure of CC to follow their own procedure & gain the necessary permission from SoS. This has been completely ignored. Included in complaint was the fact that VD claimed the temporary closure had been published, when it never was. Possibly refer the complaint to The Law Society. Potential complaint to Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors discussed re PMs handling of the matter.