I was surprised to read the headline "Opinions sought on vision for Penwith landscape" (WMN July 28) as I was sure I had seen something very similar in an edition of The Cornishman a few years ago. I was not wrong. Almost exactly three years ago The Cornishman ran a headline to a letter from a senior local Natural England official: "What do we all want for Penwith in 20 years time?" (Cornishman, May 28, 2009) in which he wrote that they had commissioned a report from an independent consultant, John Waldon, to carry out a Penwith Vision exercise. It said that after consultation with "councillors, local residents, farmers, statutory agencies and interest groups" he would be "producing his final vision document that will be available to everyone". Remember well this last phrase.
The 22-page Waldon Report – A Vision For The Moors and Related Land in West Penwith, Cornwall – was published in September 2009. He wrote that "people felt very passionately about the area and how it was managed" and noted that "this report is intended for a wider audience" and, after discussion by the now defunct Heathlands Forum, all parties present agreed that it was "Important to move forward and implement actions from John Waldron's (sic) report" (minutes September 25 2009).
Yet despite Waldon's expectation and fine words from Natural England, almost three years have passed since publication and virtually nothing has been done to implement the report or to make it widely available as promised: indeed the only place I know where it is publicly available is on our Save Penwith Moors website!
We ask why it is now felt necessary to spend yet more public money in producing another 20-year "vision"? Was the Waldon Report too independent and not to the liking of Natural England so they simply ignored it and left it on the shelf to gather dust? Do they now want to promote a more biased "vision" to suit their own agenda?
Although we welcome the news that Save Penwith Moors will, apparently, be consulted by the Penwith Landscape Partnership it is to be hoped that our input will be taken seriously as an attempt to find a balanced resolution to the controversy over moorland management, and not simply be conveniently lost amongst the dogmatic views of the "pro-fence-and-graze-everything" lobby. We will have to wait and see.