Sunday ramble

China Gateway

CGPs chairman’s statement is published click here to read.

There is also an Independent Auditors Report it’s a fairly large PDF document so some computers may have difficulties with it click here for it

This is a very important development for Thanet and my concern from the beginning has been that TDC appears to have given CGP unrealistic advice as to what would be allowed in terms of drainage.

Personally I can’t see any way that the existing plans for phase 1 can be drained within the constraints imposed by the EA, Southern Water and KIA, certainly no realistic drainage plans have appeared on the councils planning website.

I have asked various TDC planning officers about the site drainage and none of them have been able to explain how it could be drained, so until this problem is resolved the whole project seems very uncertain to me.

I went for a short walk yesterday and took a few pictures, walking around Thanet is always a thought provoking process as a lot of the problems seem to be caused by red tape click here for the pictures

Ramsgate’s dodgy dance floor

Around the bandstand on the eastcliff the coloured concrete dance floor and surrounding steps is disintegrating, one aspect of this that is very problematic is that this disintegration provides lose lumps of concrete for miscreants to throw from the cliff top.

I am told that there isn’t enough money in the kitty to repair it properly and in practice I think it would have to be completely replaced.

Probably the only affordable solution would be to tarmac it instead but of course it is a protected area in a conservation area, so it is unlikely this would be allowed.

Pleasurama.

Once again we are heading into the summer with Pleasurama a deserted building site, interesting to see people parking on the previous road layout that was never used, this business with slabs and coloured concrete as an alternative to parking and leisure facilities really is strange.

I will have another go at putting pressure on the council next week to try and get the site cleared, as you see from the pictures its an unsightly dangerous unsecured mess.

Not much wrong with Ramsgate sands it’s hard to imagine a town could have such a feature with a large council owned plot of land immediately behind and not exploit this better.

Maritime Museum

Still slow progress here but at least progress, the trouble here is that TDC doesn’t seem to understand that what the new museum operators need is to be able to be open during the holidays.

It is certainly a bit worrying to see windows that have been boarded up due to vandalism.

Thanet District Council is using Twitter I expect loads of you already know this but I couldn’t get on with Twitter so have taken while to catch up click here to follow TDC on Twitter.

It’s a bit sad to see that most of the historic boats have gone from the harbour, I believe this is probably due to the council stopping concessionary mooring fees for them, highly cost effective as nothing is mooring where they were.


As you can see from them pictured last year they were a very cost effective tourist attraction, right in the middle of the café culture that is developing on Harbour Parade.