Falmouth’s long running skatepark saga took a new twist this week when it was revealed that the project could be reduced in size to cut the cost in half.

At a meeting of Falmouth Town Council’s finance and general purposes committee on Monday, deputy mayor Kirsty Edwards told members that they wanted to reduce the cost from £1m to less than £500,000.

“We are now looking at reducing the size of the skate park,” she said. “We have asked the designers Mavericks to go back and try and get it in for less £500,000." It was £1 million.

She said they were now going to phase the work with the first phase being the groundworks and water and run off that needs to be done.

Also getting the ‘bund’ done by getting it compacted on site. She said hopefully that will be done forthwith. She said the project is out to tender at the moment.

Phase two will be the actual build of the skate park. She said there had been some discussion with the Dracaena Centre about how they can “rejig” it to get more parking up there and access for the use of the Dracaena Centre, reducing the costs of having the original huge car park.

She said the town council’s skate park committee met before Christmas and set the new budget.

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She said currently the skatepark group was asking people to vote for them in Green tokens fund up at Asda and they’ve got a couple of funding applications in. She said the council currently had an application in with the National Lottery.

“So it is looking more and more hopeful that if we can keep the seventy five thousand in this year’s budget we can feasibly get this done by the end of the year,” said Cllr Edwards. “We just need to adapt and change the size of it a little bit while still being happy with all the consultation we did originally.”

She said they may have to put the amendments to planning because it’s smaller but didn’t see any issue with that. Phase three would be introducing the extended car park when they have the cash to do so.

“That’s where we’re at. It’s looking much more positive than it was,” she said.