Re-imagining Helston’s High Streets

Creating an Attractive Town Centre

Helston is the tenth largest town in Cornwall with a growing population of over 12,000, serving a rural area which totals over 35,000 residents. The town is one of the Duchy’s oldest settlements.

Helston has a thriving community, but as with many small market towns, the centre has lost its spirit – but there is plenty of opportunity to improve the town centre and attract more visitors and locals to use the town’s amenities and businesses.

The heritage and architecture of the town centre is outstanding and must be the cornerstone for all proposals which aim for improvement.

Several recent projects have achieved notable success. The Museum of Cornish Life, CAST, refurbishment of the Grylls Monument and Coronation Park have proved extremely successful and attractive to visitors. But we are still struggling with declining town centre footfall – we need more reasons for people to come to Helston and enjoy its streets.

The Re-imaging Helston’s High Streets project is aimed at improving the main town centre areas.

Enhance Coinagehall Street, refurbish the kennels and pavements, and improve pathways in Meneage Street. Make more space for pedestrians and improve crossings for easier pedestrian movement.
Refurbish the key access points such as Horse & Jockey Lane and make the centre of town more welcoming.
Restore the town’s historic identity and pride in its impressive architecture.
Increase a sense of community within the town centre by creating space for meeting, conversation and shared activity.
Reduce through traffic whilst enabling full access to all areas of the town.

Attract more footfall to support the town centre economy.

If we are to make Helston town centre more attractive with more footfall to support the town centre economy, we need to make our streets safer and easier to use for pedestrians. Currently there is so much through traffic that people feel unsafe crossing the roads and they don’t spend time enjoying and using our town centre.

We want to welcome everyone to Helson town centre, whether they arrive by car, bus, on foot or by other means, so we need to ensure access to all areas. But traffic which is just using the centre of Helston, especially Coinagehall Street as a shortcut only bring noise, fumes and congestion. The proposals defined here aim to reduce the traffic dominance of our town centre whilst not affecting access for trade, visitors and shoppers.

Detailed proposals for each area of the town were prepared for the public consultation which was held in May in Helston’s Guildhall – these documents can be accessed by clicking the buttons opposite.