Please join the 5th Annual Camborne and Redruth Charity Walk – and walk in support of a charity of your choice.
Open the link above for details.
The new surgery story continues ….. and this time it appears to be good news!!
Most of you reading this article will no doubt remember all of the positive talk a few years back about the prospects for a new doctors’ surgery in St Day and you will probably also remember that these plans appeared to have been scuppered when the Day Lewis pharmacy group gained permission from NHS England to open a pharmacy in the former Fish and Chip shop in Scorrier Street. In spite of the benefits which having a pharmacy in St Day would bring it would also have meant that the doctors would not have been able to dispense medicines from a new surgery, being too close to a pharmacy, and the loss of income from this would have meant that the surgery would not have been viable. It would very likely have also meant that the existing surgery would have had to close, leaving St Day with no surgery at all.
St Day Parish Council, with the support of the local surgeries and many residents, organised the opposition to the new pharmacy which culminated in a public meeting with all concerned. Fortunately. at the public meeting, the Day Lewis group was made fully aware of the opposition to its proposal and, under great pressure, withdrew its plan.
Since then a great deal of discussion has been going on in the background between St Day Parish Council, the Carn to Coast surgery and a local charity and we are now able to tell you that the WJ Mills (Cottages) Trust has agreed to buy the vacant plot of land at the top of the new Mineral Way development on Telegraph Hill and that the Trust is having plans drawn up to build a doctors’ surgery there. Negotiations are currently taking place with the Carn to Coast surgery to reach an agreement for them to rent the premises. There will then be much discussion between the trustees, the local planning authority and the partners of the Carn to Coast practice to agree a suitable design but it is very much hoped that a planning application can be submitted before the end of this year with a view to work commencing some time in 2019 on a new surgery, provided that planning permission is granted. The prospects are looking good, however we thought they were before the Day Lewis group intervened so we need to proceed with caution.
We are very grateful to the trustees of the WJ Mills (Cottages) Trust for rescuing this idea at a point when all seemed lost and, if successful, it will mean that the Trust, which already provides 42 properties for rent in St Day, is able to provide even further support for a wider cross section of the residents of this parish. We are also grateful to the Temple family who have held on to the plot of land and did not sell it for affordable housing because they wanted to see a new surgery built there for everyone in St Day.
Hopefully we will now be in a position to give you regular updates!
It seems these sort of things never quite run to plan and it is comforting to know that it isn’t just in this country that projects overrun!
It appears that the drilling rig has been further delayed on its current project in Finland and will not now arrive until August with a projected start time for drilling of mid September and a projected finish date of March 2019.
Update on the United Downs Deep Geothermal Power project
We began site preparation work in mid-March and were initially hampered by bad weather and wet ground conditions. The work involves the removal of waste, levelling the surface, creating concrete pads, constructing drilling cellars, providing power, water and waste infrastructure, installing fencing, gates and lighting, and building temporary site offices. We now hope to finish groundworks by the middle of June and have the site office and visitor facility ready by the end of June.
During June we will also install ‘conductor casings’ at the location of each deep well. These are 30” diameter steel pipes installed to a depth of 10m to protect any near-surface loose material from the drilling operation. They will be installed by a small water well drilling rig.
The drilling rig we will be using is currently being used to drill and test a geothermal well in Finland and unfortunately this project has fallen further behind schedule. As a result, the rig won’t be released for mobilisation to Cornwall until the middle of July. We therefore now expect drilling to begin in early August and finish in February 2019.
The first four stations of our microseismic monitoring system have been installed and are now collecting data. A further three to five stations will follow soon.
Our education programme continues to pick up. We have visited five secondary schools so far and have visits planned to about a dozen primary schools before the end of the school year. We are also in contact with schools about visits and sessions in the Autumn term. Our second educational film, aimed at secondary schools and above, is almost complete.
Once we have the site finished and the office ready for use, we will be organising drop-in sessions for local residents and businesses to visit and find out more about what we are doing.
The project website provides information about geothermal energy in general, and the UDDGP project in particular, and will be kept up to date with news on the programme and site activities.
www.uniteddownsgeothermal.co.uk
Peter Ledingham
UDDGP Project Manager
May 2018
