By Peter Tremayne

Today’s (Tuesday’s) extraordinary meeting of Cornwall Council’s economic growth and development overview and scrutiny committee began with an apology from its chairman, councillor Tim Dwelly, explaining why the privatisation of Newquay Airport is not on the agenda.

“I wanted it to be on the agenda but I was over-ruled by the Monitoring Officer,” said councillor Dwelly.  The original reason for today's extraordinary meeting was to examine the privatisation of the airport.

The interim Monitoring Officer, Matt Stokes, is due to be replaced by a new Monitoring Officer, Paul Grant, on 17th February.  Mr Grant will become Cornwall Council’s sixth top lawyer in seven years.

County Hall officials are hoping that an extraordinary cabinet meeting on 17th January will agree to their airport privatisation deal, despite multiple concerns over its legality.

An “exclusivity period” allowing the council to negotiate with only one “preferred” bidder expired on 31^st October.

The deal was supposed to have come before a cabinet meeting in November but was withdrawn from the agenda.  The same thing has happened to this month’s cabinet meeting.

Councillor Dwelly said he had been assured that his scrutiny committee would get an opportunity to examine that airport privatisation “but we don’t know when that will be.  Hopefully, fairly soon, we will know the date.”

Even if the airport is privatised in January, its future could remain uncertain with Cornwall Council elections now only 141 days away.

petertremayne@cornwallreports.co.uk