45 local artists with 90 pieces of work at The York Street Gallery Ramsgate

 The last  Exhibition of 2014 is by 45 local artists with 90 pieces of work in just about every medium. This is a special show for Christmas. The exhibition runs - 17th Dec - 4th Jan

Ramsgate High Street, a thing of beauty is a joy forever, Thanet council cuts and some sort of ramble

The scaffolding has just come of the building in the High Street and it now looks like the picture above.

Embarrassing this as I can’t for the life of me think what it looked like before, I am pretty certain that it was a lot shorter and at some time I must have taken pictures of it and put them on the internet somewhere.

Not exactly a carbuncle, more of a nonentity, I can’t even remember what shop it was before the town centre changed due to Westwood Cross, it was probably a clothes shop or a shoe shop and I guess they don’t register that much with me.

As you can see we have got some of the highest cuts in council spending http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30537288 I guess no surprises there. 

Oddly enough up my end of King Street in Ramsgate, we have a restaurant topping tripadvisor see http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g186314-d6548468-Reviews-Il_Tricolore-Ramsgate_Isle_of_Thanet_Kent_England.html a new pub The Ravensgate Arms has been opened by the Late Knights brewery http://www.lateknightsbrewery.co.uk/ This has has a bit of a chequered past recently as Maguires / Hamilton Tavern but now looks to become a much better venue and as I have been saying my bookshop is much busier. 

Manston airport, last nights extraordinary council meeting webcast and a possible ramble about what it may all mean.

First here is the council’s webcast of the meeting    

I should point out here that this is the official council produced webcast  

Anyway I thought I had better put it up on the blog as soon as I saw it was available and will endeavour to add to this post and try to make some sense of what it all means and where we are with Manston if I get the time.  

First my own position on Manston, this can be summarised as being when the airport closed I was for efforts to get it reopened as a regional airport with a greater leaning towards the museums on the site. My hope was that the councils TDC and KCC could pursue this with heritage and regional economic funding.

I am and always have been against Manston becoming a freight hub that we can’t fly from, it has always appeared to me and no one has come up with any convincing argument against this, that for a freight hub to be economically viable the noise and air pollution would exceed the levels that the environment agency would allow.

For this reason I have always seen the freight hub as a ruse which has an alternate goal.  

My contention is that it only by there being some element of publicly funded investment in Manston that continued aviation use can be ensured. 

Although I think much of last night’s antics at the council were predetermined and staged for political reasons relating to the forthcoming elections, what underlies this and allows these antics is the secrecy under which the council operates.

My own feelings are that when companies whish to business with the council they should either sign an agreement allowing all of the documentation to be published on the council’s website as it is generated, or pay a fee to cover the expense of keeping it secret.

In simple terms the council have decided that they have no indemnity partner that fulfils the criteria for them to engage in a cpo.

To arrive at this the council used their own legal team and took advice from Guy Williams of Landmark Chambers, a leading barrister specialising in Planning, Environmental, Transport and Infrastructure, Compulsory Purchase and Rating Law.  

Now the walkout last night seems to centre on the council wishing to discuss whether the cabinet had made the right decision, when they decided that the only contender to be indemnity partner RiverOak didn’t fulfil the criteria.

The problem here is that the council officers made this decision and it was endorsed the cabinet who had all seen the secret documents showing why RiverOak were deemed unacceptable. However RiverOak are in the position where they can keep there documents secret, and the leader of the council has stated that RiverOak will not allow the documents to be made public so all the members of the council can see them and discuss them in an open council meeting.

Theoretically one option the council had was to hold yesterdays council meeting as a closed session, excluding the public and the press, theoretically this would have meant that all of the councillors there could have seen the secret documents.

In practice however, with the Manston issue the council has got itself into the position where it appears to be acting as I direct result of public opinion, this is quantified by the around 100 protestors who turn up to Manston related meetings and protest and around 3,000 UK residents who signed the online petition to keep Manston open http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/62738

As the prayer for this petition wasn’t for an airfreight hub, it is very difficult to say how many people in the whole of the UK support what RiverOak say they want to do.

It has been my contention for a considerable time now that if the council are going to act as a direct result of perceived public opinion then the first stage is for the council to hold some sort of public consultation.

I would say a major concern for the council at the moment would be if they hand out the confidential information that RiverOak want them to keep secret and that information leaks out then RiverOak may sue the council.     

There is a sense in which the support for any aviation activity, regardless of it’s nature, at Manston is becoming self defeating. Some activities of the various pro Manston groups would seem to have reached the point where they have become counter productive.

This is a quote from the leader of the council on one of the pro Manston FaceBook pages.

“Iris Johnston People who have been involved in SMA from the outset will know there were was a time when I had to convene a meeting so that all supporters of the airport really worked together for their common aim to get the airport reopened.

I also spoke to and met Mrs Gloag who was adamant she could not reopen and had already had conversations with RiverOak and rejected working with them.

My hope that the new owners even with the shared ownership with Mrs Gloag might revisit.

This was a possibility but the very serious attacks on their integrity has completely alienated them.

RiverOak did not get through the soft market testing and are very clear that they do not want TDC to allow their paperwork with us in the public domain. Commercial sensitivity was always going to be an issue.

The dossier they say they are sending to Government is a step in the right direction but as yet TDC have not had their formal release from our confidentiality agreement.

Sent from my iPad”  

I guess there is always the possibility that supporting a freight hub instead of a passenger airport may eventually be seen as a major reason why Manston wasn’t rejuvenated with some aviation aspect.

Whatever the situation this is much more about rejecting the indemnity partner than supporting the airport.

The basic questions are something like:

Do they have a good three year track record in business?

Have they made a concerted effort to buy the site from the current owners for a reasonable price?

Can the prove they have the money to see through the whole cpo?

Does their business plan produce an overriding public interest, above the existing owners business plan, to such an extent that government would override the current owners human rights and deprive them of their property?

Do their finances comply with UK money laundering legislation?

back to the video:

I think the first real breaking news in video of the council meeting comes at about 23.07 when Iris says the new owners have put in some planning applications. Or at least I guess that is what she means by “move forward with some planning applications”.  

As I have been saying since the TDC cpo was first mooted the council pursuing a cpo also being the planning authority for the site will present some difficulties when or if it comes to determining the compensation paid to the current owners. 

Anyway as far as I can see any decision now is in the hands of the UK government perhaps the results will be like this one http://www.crewechronicle.co.uk/news/local-news/battle-over-festival-site-5661427

Where to build 12,000 homes in Thanet and man fights with plan

Like it or not people have to live somewhere and with the government directing councils that homes have to be built and spaces have to be made for them, a question a lot of people are asking is. Where?

Thanet District Council have produced various documents about this and I think at the moment the most relevant is the 250 page Draft Local Plan to 2031, if you live in Thanet you really ought to read this and may be asked questions later.

Suppose you don’t want to read it all, but want to skim it looking at what interests you the most, an IT tip here is – click on the link to it – press Ctrl and F at the same time, this should make a search box appear in the top right corner of the document. You knew that didn’t you? Anyway if say you are interested in the airport, then putting airport in the search box and using the up down arrows are an option.

While you have a bit a think about that one have a look at this map, clicking on it should make it bigger, the orangey brown areas are where a lot of the new homes are likely to be built.

Here is the link to the Draft Local Plan https://scontent-b-lhr.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/10502046_322557577937838_8638706586995685032_n.jpg?oh=dda470646fc35cc4215ed468a6d162b0&oe=5503672C

When we get to the 5^th of January the 6 weeks consultation period begins.

I will ramble on here if I get a chance, mostly about the council not really seeming to have a plan B for either the port or the airport.    

The map in this post is Crown copyright Ordnance Survey

The council the law and the money

If like me you pay council tax here in Thanet you may be wondering just what is going on with the council and its legal fees.

There is the fifty grand on exonerating the chief executive, see http://www.thanetgazette.co.uk/Council-boss-influence-probe-cost-pound-46-8k/story-25699346-detail/story.html and of course the question; while she was on leave did she receive any wages from the council?

Then there is the twenty grand they spent on trying to stop Cllr Ian Driver from releasing secret documents about the Pleasurama development in Ramsgate, which they are trying to claim back from Ian Driver, who doesn’t have the money.

In both of these cases of course Ian Driver was involved and at the end of the day it looks like seventy grand that should have gone into improving facilities in Thanet has gone into the pockets of lawyers.

Underlying this is that Ian Driver is an elected councillor who seemed to have been doing what a lot locals seem to be saying they want local councillors to do. By this I mean tackle the secrecy surrounding important local issues in the council and point out possible wrongdoing by the senior people running the council.

Now perhaps all of the blame should be laid at the feet of one Ian Driver, perhaps all of the documents that the council would like to keep secret should be kept secret and perhaps no councillor officer should ever be accused of maladministration by the elected councillors. Or conversely perhaps only councillors with sufficient funds to engage in legal battles with the council should be allowed to stand for election.

Putting aside the cost of the business with the chief executive I think the business over the secret council documents is a new one. By this I mean I think the business of a council using the law and the cost of the law to control what a councillor reveals about council projects to effectively gag a councillor is a new one.

Of course you may not like Ian Driver and you may not agree with what he has to say but the business of controlling what he says to the Thanet council taxpayers as their elected representative by using legal facilities that he can’t afford seems to be possibly setting an unfortunate president.

I have to admit to not really knowing the answers to this problem, having been on the receiving end of the council’s lawyers over the Pleasurama information which involved two letters from the council’s solicitor’s both threatening me with a fine or imprisonment, in one instance for linking to an Isle of Thanet Gazette article and in the other instance for linking to the Google cached page of the same article, I came to the conclusion that something isn’t quite right here.

Of course when the council is paying £20k in legal fees to stop a councillor releasing information or a few hundred pounds for a couple of solicitors letters forcing me to remove information from the blog it is actually our money that officers are using and not their own.

I guess one aspect of this is the sledgehammer to crack a nut, inasmuch as the council didn’t use the much cheaper approach of emailing me or phoning me up and asking me to remove the information before going down the expensive route of paying for a solicitor’s letter.      

I guess one lesson here for councillors is if the council serve and injunction against you, don’t try and defend it unless you have several thousand pounds to spare to pay for a barrister.   

I may ramble on here if I get any more ideas about this one.            

Wynard Park email TDC councillors about The Manston Airport Site and some sort of ramble

Well first here is the email:

The office of Trevor Cartner and Chris Musgrave Wynyard Park House Wynyard Avenue Wynyard, Billingham Tees Valley TS22 5TB Tel: 01740 661000 www.wynyardpark.com

12th December 2014 Dear Councillors, FORMER MANSTON AIRPORT We have noted that yesterday evening TDC's Cabinet reached the conclusion that no suitable partner has been identified who can clearly demonstrate an ability to fund the compulsory purchase and subsequent commercial operation of an airport at Manston. This decision is commendable, particularly in light of the appalling bullying and abusive behaviour of many of the supporters of the intended operator. The Cabinet's decision also accords with legal advice received by ourselves which is that the chances of TDC achieving a successful CPO outcome were remarkably slim and that the financial losses to the council would have been huge. We also note that an Extraordinary Meeting of the Council is taking place on Tuesday, 16 December "to consider and debate its position on Manston Airport taking into account all possible proposals". No papers have been posted on the council's website so we are unaware of the course this discussion will take. We would, however, like to briefly restate our intended approach to this site. Overall Vision We anticipate that the site will be redeveloped for a number of different uses. Without being prescriptive, and fully accepting that any change of use requires planning permission, we see the mix including employment space complemented by appropriate housing, education, sports, community and other facilities. We are confident of creating some 4,000 jobs over a 20 year period. Overall, we wish the site to become an engine for the transformation of Thanet's economy, lifting it to become a major player on a national and potentially international scale. We believe Thanet deserves nothing less. We have actually run out of space at Discovery Park for large new buildings and in trying to preserve its character as a science and office park we require somewhere to create a manufacturing park to meet current and future requirements. Opportunities to acquire sites of 800 acres are few and far between and we decided that the Manston site was ideal for our needs, being close to our existing base, superbly well-connected by road and with the promise of a new Parkway station linking it to London via HS1. We are already in talks with two new companies who, if we succeed in securing them, will bring an initial 300 jobs. This is about twice the number of jobs lost when the airport closed. Research into "best in class" developments Work is currently underway to identify the best mixed-used developments around the world. We hope to conclude this research by the end of January, the results of which will be discussed with TDC. From this, we will start to devise the outline of our proposals and once again these will be discussed with TDC and your views reflected. Public Consultation We have already published our provisional timetable for consulting the people of Thanet, the majority of whom we believe support our approach. Two main events are proposed, one in the spring when our initial plans will be revealed and another in the summer when revised proposals that reflect feedback from the spring event will be published for further consultation. Throughout this process there will be regular dialogue with TDC at Member and appropriate Officer level.Does aviation form any part of our proposals? The former airport, like many small regional airports, suffered from a high cost base with too few passenger flights and a freight operation which was hampered by a ban on night-time flights. The fact is that without significant subsidy the airport doesn’t function as a business. The airport had already closed before we bought the site and there is no credible business case to reopen it. Set against these facts, we recognise there is a lot of local feeling and a rich history attached to the site, which we respect. Indeed, we have already gifted the freehold of the site on which the Spitfire and Hurricane Museum stands to that body and we have offered to look at options for building a new facility for the RAF Museum. Do we have a track record of success? Wynyard Park started off as a derelict manufacturing site after Samsung transferred its operations to the Czech Republic. It is now home to more than 2,000 workers, is growing at a steady and sustainable pace and has around 60 tenants of all shapes and sizes. This has been achieved without a single penny of public subsidy. Discovery Park is the site of the former Pfizer operation. Pfizer removed most (but not all) of their people before we acquired the site in July 2012 with around 650 employees remaining, but at a significant risk of being lost in the following months. We announced a target of 3,000 jobs within 5 years and, whilst we knew that was ambitious, we now have around 2,200 jobs in 28 months, all working for the 102 companies already on site and with several more poised to sign. We expect to reach 3,000 ahead of target and our long-term strategy works towards achieving 5,000. Recent research has shown that 86% of employees at Discovery Park live in East Kent, so these truly are local jobs for local people. Conclusion We have been open and honest with everyone we have met in Kent. Whilst it would have been very easy to pretend that we were looking at the site as an airport, only to announce within a couple of years that there was no business case, we prefer to be transparent with our intentions. We genuinely believe we can bring jobs and prosperity to East Kent by creating a good place to work both for employers and employees and by forging links with education providers and training organisations to close the "skills gap". Our way is not to bang drums, issue threatening letters or send abusive emails, but to work respectfully and courteously with a range of public, private and voluntary organisations to achieve lasting benefits for Thanet. We very much look forward to working positively with the Council for many years to come. Yours faithfully Chris Musgrave & Trevor Cartner Not sure how that will format in the blog post anyway here is the ramble. I have to say that I am becoming increasingly surprised by the lack of support for the new owners of The Manston Airport site from local politicians. Anyway here is their website http://www.wynyardpark.com/ it comes up when you put Wynyard Park into Google. I suppose most of my reservations about the cpo have always been based on what comes up when you put RiverOak Investments into Google particularly the two websites http://www.riveroakic.com/ and http://www.riveroakinvestments.co.uk/ the first and obvious question being why are they not linked together? I will ramble on here and come back to Manston in a bit, my bookshop hasn’t been as busy today, maybe due to the weather although I noticed that Ramsgate doesn’t seem to have been so busy during the last few days. Our internet orders seem to have peaked during the beginning of this week and I guess that internet orders for Christmas must be tailing off for everyone. I had assumed that people were doing their shopping out of town but when we went to Westwood Cross this evening it was very quiet too, no problem parking and getting a table next to the balcony with an armchair. Here is the sketch from there. Back to Manston Airport. As I say something strange here; I could understand the fringe of local politics perhaps not supporting an enterprise like this, but the antics of the last few weeks defies understanding. So an open question to all of our local politicians; do any of you actually support the new owners?

A few Ramsgate photos from the last few days and some sort of ramble

 Only in Thanet could you have a tourist information map that doesn't show the town's tourist information office but shows one in a different Thanet town, i guess it's a good thing we don't get much in the way of tourists

 Not much movement on the Pleasurama site although some rumours that Cardy Construction are going to pay some of the repairs to the cliff facade.

 I find it strange the castellated building that houses Pete’s Fish Factory and the Belgian Café and appears on the 1822 map isn’t listed, anyway it has now sprouted an extra floor by enlarging the roof.

 There is a fairly large dredger on the slipway but no sign of the new development there.

 No sign of any activity on the Pavillion yet either.

The amount of sand at high tide on Ramsgate main sands is becoming very depleted

 No sign of any historic vessels on the historic boat pontoon either

 This is the view from the cafe in the new Sainsbury

 Salad, pot of tea and mince pie, good quality, just as if you had bought the ingredients from the supermarket, cost just over £5

a first attempt at sketching from here didn't work out too well, cars and large modern buildings fairly far away, something which may improve with practice.

And here is a bizarre one, the facebook page for the Manston Airport Independence Party. Shades of Python and Woodehouse https://www.facebook.com/manstonindependentparty?fref=nf

Anyway the screenshot gives you some idea; “An open letter to Leader Iris Johnston and the Cabinet. Ridiculous demands have being made by RiverOak” I think they are supposed to be on the same side as the American property hedgefund RiverOak but what they say seems to have got a bit muddled.

All I can say is vote MAIP