I don’t think anyone in the town would dispute the fact that the lorries using Port Ramsgate make the western undercliff unpleasant and difficult to use for leisure. Since it’s the beach there that has scored the highest possible rating for water quality three years running I thought I would enquire how much benefit financial Port Ramsgate is to us.The answer is frankly astonishing, the port lost £692,000 in the last financial year, and this is just the port not the rest of the harbour.
The rest of the harbour lost £130,000 much of this I assume is attributable to trying to dredge it instead of using the sluices to flush the sand out.
So why not turn the whole port area into a residential and leisure complex based around water sports?
The land sales alone would net TDC millions.
Michael,
ReplyDeleteSo why, pray tell do we have Port Ramsgate? Subsidised by the ratepayer. Do we make any profit on the island, anywhere?
Thanks for your info as well as all those wonderful photos....
I'd be interested to know your sources for those figures, as according to my sources the Port and Harbour are net contributors to TDC. How has that somehow been translated into mega losses?
ReplyDeleteI suspect there are some, er, fishy financial finaglings going on somewhere along the line. I think we should be told!
Richard from TDCs statement of accounts click here to read I am not much good with accounts so perhaps I made some sort of error.
ReplyDeleteMichael,
ReplyDeleteLike you I went 'hunting' through the published accounts and my sums like yours show a massive loss for all of our harbour operations. I've copied the relevent figures but maybe someone can explain how we can afford to subsidise to this extent while increasing Council Tax and reducing services and grants to worthwhile causes...??
HARBOURS
Expenditure on harbours includes the Port of Ramsgate, Ramsgate Royal Harbour, Broadstairs and Margate Harbours and is included under the heading Highways, Roads and Transport Services. The majority of income and expenditure takes place within the Ramsgate operations.
Restated
2005/06
(Surplus)/
Deficit
2006/07
Expenditure
2006/07
Income 2006/07
(Surplus)/
Deficit
£'000s £'000s £'000s £'000s
Ramsgate New Port 546 2,753 (2,061) 692
Ramsgate Royal Harbour (4) 1,854 (1,724) 130
Broadstairs Harbour (11) 49 (54) (5)
Margate Harbour 3 24 (9) 15
534 4,680 (3,848) 832
Mitch as your table didn’t come out to clearly I have copied it from TDCs accounts and converted it into html so it should appear as a table on most peoples computers click here to examine it
ReplyDeleteThanks Michael,
ReplyDeleteThat's better. What it is to be a techie.....!!! Nobody's told us why we're subsidising the boating fraternity though?
Those figures look a bit weird. I'll run them past Cyril, my accountant, and get back to you.
ReplyDelete