Article from MK leader Cllr Dick Cole, which will be published in this week’s Cornish Guardian.

A couple of weeks ago, I was invited onto Radio Cornwall to discuss Channel 4’s new three-part series titled “Finding the Cornish Dream.” It had yet to be broadcast. Not a documentary as such, the programme had been described as a “branded entertainment partnership,” which aimed to “build awareness” of a UK residential property portal provider known as “On The Market.” It was all about estate agents showing “prospective buyers around dream homes in Cornwall” and helping them to “navigate its thriving property market.”

I made the rather obvious comment that the programme would almost certainly be about a mythical “lifestyle-Cornwall” for an external audience, rather than about the “life-struggle Cornwall” that is a reality for so many.

I have now watched the first two episodes. If you haven’t seen this programme – which I would subtitle as “selling Cornwall to the highest bidder” – it will not surprise you to know that the accompanying commentary was all about beaches, charming villages and market towns, beaches, rolling countryside, beaches, dramatic wilderness, more beaches and award-winning beaches.

In terms of the actual properties, the principal focus was on dwellings (with ridiculous price-tags) in coastal or secluded rural locations. This included a £1,400,000 house overlooking the beach at Pentire, which the new owners immediately rebuilt at a similar cost to the original purchase price. Then there was the estate agent hyperbole and distortions relating to the Nansledan urban extension at Newquay being carried out by the Duchy of Cornwall and the so-called eco-town / West Carclaze Garden Village near Penwithick, described by the programme as sitting between “coastal shores and the wilds of Bodmin Moor.”

With so many local households struggling to access basic housing to rent or purchase at a sensible price, or indeed facing evictions because owners wish to sell their properties or turn them into airbnbs, this programme is unbelievably crass and insensitive. It has been described by one local journalist as “property pornography” and, thus far, the programme has not in any meaningful way addressed the unaffordability of housing in today’s dysfunctional housing market. Meanwhile, the single reference to the Cornish as a national minority was spectacularly misjudged.

My anger at “Finding the Cornish Dream” is certainly shared by a lot of people across Cornwall. A friend of mine described it as “the most awful piece of work” he’d ever “had the displeasure to watch,” while other comments on social media have variously and rightly described the series as shameful, grotesque, disgusting and toxic.