JOHN WELLER -
OUT AND ABOUT IN THE NORTH CORNWALL COMMUNITY

Coming from a North Cornwall family, and living with his wife and four children in the historic market town of St Columb Major, John feels passionately about our local community and its concerns.

He likes nothing better than getting out and meeting local people, finding out what makes them tick and listening to their concerns about our local economy and businesses, health service, education, transport issues, fishing, farming and all the other things that affect North Cornwall.

Rural Post Offices

Rural Post Offices have been top of John's list since he took action in February, 2000, to bring in 100% rate relief to all rural post offices in Restormel Borough Council, where he is the Leader of the Council. He is urging the other Cornish Councils to follow this lead in delivering material support to village life.

John recently visited Rock Post Office and is pictured below with the postmistress and Anthony Cooke discussing the difficulties of keeping an all year round village service going in an area that relies almost exclusively on seasonal business to retain its economic viability.

Camelford Town Centre

Supporting the regeneration of the town centre of Camelford and saving its picturesque main streets from heavy commercial traffic have been high on John's campaigning list.

John is seen below, with Bob Ellison and Anthony Cooke, both prospective Conservative County Council candidates, in the centre of Camelford, surveying the town centre and discussing its future, just seconds before one of the offending vehicles forced them to move aside.

John said," The quality of life, in a beautiful old town centre such as Camelford, is seriously affected, for both residents and traders. These heavy commercial vehicles are just passing through, they bring no benefit to this town; only dust, dirt and noise.

We need to re-route all the heavy through traffic, around the town, so that, in the future, locals and visitors alike may enjoy living in, shopping in and visiting, Camelford.

A by-pass must be sensitively brought about , taking into full account the vitality of Camelford as a regional shopping centre.

With the implementation of a by-pass, we must invest in the quality of the town and insure adequate free car-parking."

Tourism in North Cornwall Having businesses in Newquay, John knows from first-hand experience what it is like to run your own business and how a strong Tourism sector is essential to our Cornish prosperity. Tourism related business brings in almost 27% of Cornwall's business income. He also recognises that Tourism provides many jobs for our local community.

Here he is in the sister Tourist Town, chatting to the staff at the Bude Visitor Centre, which provides Tourism information for visitors to the town.

John believes that Bude and Newquay share a common challenge and can learn from each other.

Coming from a North Cornwall family, John has relatives and friends spread all over the area, who work in every sector of our local economy. He talks to and listens to all of his contacts and is out every day, visiting people in their workplaces, finding out what they want from local and central government and listening to their ideas for making Cornwall a better and more vibrant economy.

Improving our local prosperity will strengthen our ability to attract high quality visitors, both from home and abroad. John is especially keen to see the Tourism sector benefit from Government funding, so that the quality of our hotels and guest houses can be raised to that of our European and foreign competitors.

John's vision is to bring the kind of ideas and energy that have created the Eden Project in Mid-Cornwall, to bear on other projects in North Cornwall, for the benefit of everyone in Cornwall.

Protecting our beautiful scenery and our environment are essential and have to be part of every project to improve our economy. John believes that the quality of the environmental ideas associated with Eden can be repeated in all future regeneration schemes in the County.

Rural Concerns and our Community

North Cornwall's economy is based on small and medium -sized businesses, often situated in the heart of our rural community. John knows that visitors are attracted by the rural and coastal landscape and he believes that keeping the balance between environmental and business issues, in rural areas, is crucial. That is why the potential conflict between the farmers' needs and the seeming conflict with Tourism must not be allowed to develop. Farmers are the guardians of our rural landscape, which is why so many people travel to Cornwall to enjoy our unique landscape.

John is pictured here with the County Council candidate, Richard Purser, and the proprietors of Clifton House, Kilkhampton. This area has experienced severe economic hardship, due to the Foot and Mouth outbreak. John has been talking to rural businesses throughout North Cornwall about his campaign to get the Government to reform the Business Rates system for small businesses and to permanently reduce business rates for small enterprises such as these tea rooms.

Support for Vital Rural Businesses

John's support for rural Post offices reflects just one aspect of his work within our community. Small Towns and Villages need shops, pubs and petrol filling stations, as well as their Post Office.

This is why John has been urging the Government to extend rural rate relief to all the key businesses that support our rural communities.

Competition from supermarket and town filling stations has already forced one North Cornwall business to close its petrol filling pumps. Here, John Smith, proprietor of the Old Forge Garage, at St Minver, discusses with John and County Council candidate, Anthony Cooke, how he is having to close down the petrol sales part of his garage business, because it is no longer economic.

News that the Department of the Environment has heeded John's call and is intending to give rates relief to sole village petrol stations has, however, come too late to keep the Old Forge pumps in action.