As many will know, we, Bude-Stratton Town Council have been working tirelessly to save the Storm Tower at Compass Point. Since 2020 plans have been afoot to make this ambitious project come to life.
It started with a hugely successful Crowdfunding Campaign in early 2021, and the year ended with the fantastic news that we were successful with our bid to the National Lottery Heritage Fund with £250,000 granted to the project to move the Storm Tower inland and work on a series of community projects.
Alongside all of this we have been working to obtain planning permission on what is an extensively protected and scientifically important site. We have worked with Ecologists and Natural England prior to the application being submitted, but unfortunately, even after our extensive preliminary work the project has received a setback in obtaining planning permission.
Whilst many steps had been taken to cater for the requirements of Natural England, the statutory body has required further reports and mitigations to be put in place before it will allow Cornwall Council Planners the ability to give consent. The requirements of Natural England had already delayed the project by a month and used the buffer contingency time in the existing project plan. Without planning consent, we are unable to have ground investigations works completed to finalise the foundation designs for the new location. Even more importantly without any assured start date, we cannot put the work out to tender.
We remain fully committed to the project and are continuing to press ahead as fast as possible to obtain planning permission. However, we are now unable to achieve the intended start date of March 2022 and therefore will not have the weather and daylight to complete the project this year. The physical dismantlement and reconstruction of the Storm Tower will not take place now until next year. We will continue to update and work with local schools and community partners as part of the project to ensure the intended community projects will still take place next year alongside the towers move.
Thank you to the community for your continued support and please be assured that we will continue to work to deliver this project and “Save Our Storm Tower” for our community.
