Chinagate and China Gateway the ruminations of a garrulous retailer

The China Gateway development is undoubtedly the largest planning application, the eventual size that the property speculator appears to envisage dwarfs even Westwood Cross, it’s also probably the most controversial that there has ever been in Thanet.

The three biggest questions being: Will the thousands of extra traffic movements both of HGVs and cars visiting the site cause gridlock? Will our water supply be safe and if there is some sort of accidental spillage permanently damaging our reservoir where do we go from there? Will the noise, air and light pollution make life in Acol awful?

The traffic question seems pretty much unanswered, as we don’t know where the HGVs are coming from and going to, obviously the proportion going to and from London and that going to Dover harbour or Port Ramsgate will be very significant.

As far as one can see from examining the plans they are much more for a distribution hub than a manufacturing base and that would tie in with what one knows about China where manufacturing costs are much lower than in the U.K.

With the rising cost of air freight and Chinese imports being based around the products being cheaper than those manufactured in Europe, one wouldn’t expect much to come and go via Manston airport.

There is also the fact that neither Dover nor Ramsgate can handle ocean-going freighters, which begs some questions in itself, like are the Chinese aware of this?

The main problem here is the very sparse information about which Chinese companies are going to lease units and what they are going use them for.

The water pollution question is still totally unresolved the vast majority of the hundreds of pages about it in the planning application can’t be used as they don’t comply with what Southern Water insists on. The architects haven’t come up with any plans for drainage that would comply although they have had considerable time to do so, that leaves us all in the dark there.

The biggest warehouses set to run 24 7 and surrounded by parking for over 100 lorries are right up the Acol end of the site, so that doesn’t look very promising either.

There are all sorts of other unanswered questions, like the explosives manufacturer in the middle of the site, who doesn’t want to go and employs local people.

Then there is the relationship between senior councillors, council officers and the property speculator, I will remind you that when documents showing irregularities in this relationship were shown to 3 prominent Conservative councillors they threatened to resign and eventually reached a compromise where they withdrew their support for the cabinet. Now this matter is being investigated by the serious economic crime unit at Kent police HQ, right and proper thing to do however I think a lot of us would like to know the outcome before the development gets to go ahead.

Aspects of the way we are protected from dangerous or unwise developments by some government bodies have shown weaknesses, for instance when I read the drainage plans and found they were inadequate, I wrote to the environment agency about this and they told me that they didn’t have the resources to read the drainage assessment properly.

Then there is the nonsensical rule that councillors can’t discuss the issue in case they appear to have an opinion about it before the meeting, so we have the biggest thing to hit Thanet probably ever, the main people one wants to discuss it with are the people you have elected to represent you on this issue and they are scared that if the discuss it, they won’t be allowed to take part in the decision making process.

Since it takes several days to read and comprehend the planning application, the notion that anyone could possibly read it and then fail to form any opinion until they had been to the meeting seems a little suspect to me.

My concern here is that all of the councillors have read and understood the application properly, so they can make an informed decision.

There is an interesting post on David Green’s site about the lack of comment on the issue by councillors and other aspects of the issue http://eastclifframsgate.blogspot.com/2008/10/china-gateway.html

Also an interesting article by Chris Wells in the paper http://www.thisiskent.co.uk/eastkent/Chris-Wells-writes-China-Gateway-decision-Thursday/article-374126-detail/article.html

Well in fact plenty of coverage in the local papers links on sidebar and the other local blogs and even the bbc this morning.
I have published up many of the related documents about it on a series of web pages http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/drink/

The plans and most of the documents from the statuary consultees are on the Thanet planning website http://www.ukplanning.com/thanet planning reference F/TH/08/0400

The two biggest emotive issues jobs for Thanet and Chinese human rights are not planning issues, however as this will have such a huge effect on our island for many years one can hardly put them completely aside from the issue.

I think the real question is, is it a good and viable planning application or is it a bad and unworkable application? I don’t think the Chinese, the pro lobby the anti lobby, the council, the local economy or anything else will benefit from passing bad plans.