Securing Planning Permission at a Sensitive Site

Click on image below to see gallery

Meeting the needs of visitors

Rock, near Padstow is one of Cornwall’s most highly sought after locations for visitors and wealthy second home owners. CEC’s expertise was used to put together plans to extend the public car park to cater for increasing visitor numbers. We delivered ecological, landscape design and Landscape and Visual Impact Assessment services. Our input was instrumental in achieving planning permission for the proposals on this sensitive site. Discharging planning conditions and developing a scheme in an ecologically sensitive manner that fitted within the local landscape.

Addressing the challenges of a sensitive site

The Quarry car park at Rock enjoys a spectacular location on the banks of the Camel Estuary, with sweeping views across the river and out to sea. It is a highly sensitive site: bordered by a SSSI and views of it from an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) on the other side of the river. We worked closely with John Grimes Partnership to develop sensitively integrated proposals that preserved the habitat as much as possible and mitigated for losses. We also looked at screening views of the car park views from the AONB.

Supporting onsite contractors to avoid harming protected species

The works extending the car park involved a large amount of vegetation, top soil, sand dune and retaining sleeper wall removal. These sites are often home to lizards and slow worms which are protected species. As it is illegal to intentionally kill or injure them we set up an ecological watching brief to ensure no protected species were harmed.

CEC established a great working relationship with several operatives at Bridge Civil Engineering. As a result, twenty slow worms and three common lizards found during the works were re-homed quickly and safely.

Our Landscape and Ecological Management Plan ensures that the remaining sand dunes, that attract so many visitors are also protected.