Cornwall Council looks set to intervene in major development plans which will allow a new town to be built on the outskirts of Truro, writes Richard Whitehouse, local democracy reporter.

The council’s leading Cabinet has agreed to take a “strategic leadership and delivery role” in developments which are planned on land close to Threemilestone.

A series of planning permissions is already in place to build around 2,700 on a number of different sites in the area. However the developments have all stalled for a variety of reasons.

As a result Cornwall Council is now looking to intervene to not only get the developments started again, but also to improve the quality of what will be built.

The council says that under the existing proposals the developments would create a number of “incoherent” housing estates. Instead it wants to bring them together to create a new town.

This could house up to 8,000 people and would be a similar size of Liskeard, Launceston or St Ives.

In order to bring this change the council is looking to draw up an urban design strategy and design code which would set guidelines for how the new homes and development would be built and what it would look like.