Saturday 18 July 2009

Pleasurama more delay confirmed by Thanet District Council’s boss.

Now it’s to be early 2010 according to Richard Samuel chief executive of Thanet District Council, no word of the site being cleared for leisure and parking use this summer.

I have just published this information on http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/ it comes under the heading of 17/07/2009 - Agenda supplement published - Agenda Supplement : Agenda Supplement: Meeting of Jul 23 2009 7:00PM, Council in case you wonder how the council announced this news.

That will make it twelve years since the old Pleasurama building burnt down, I wouldn’t have thought it much to ask to get the site tided up until they actually start work.

This agenda supplements is the chief executives report and like so many council documents is only published as a pdf file, all very well if you are wealthy and own a modern computer that can manage this sort of file, not so funny for some of the pensioners I know that have computers designed for Widows 98 struggling to run XP.

So here is what he has to say:

“Pleasurama: in the light of the impact of the recession in relation to borrowing, the
council has investigated the ability of the developer to carry out the scheme. Officers are
satisfied that the company is in a position to proceed and later in this meeting, members
are asked to ratify that we proceed with the proposal. Work on site is expected to start
early in 2010.”

I have left it in the funny format it came in when I copied it from the pdf, just irritating really.
Back to Pleasurama the developer can’t obtain the normal business insurance from their own bank to protect the council’s financial interests.

The new, 6th set of plans I think, don’t comply to the environment agency’s basic safety recommendations click on the link to read their letter about it http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/ea/id2.htm

The council officers are recommending the councillors to ratify that the council proceeds with the proposal.

Some of the councillors are not happy about this see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2009/06/what-thanet-district-councillors-have.html
Most of course will probably tow the line, I am beginning to wonder if most would put their heads in the fire if officers recommended it.
I have just been down to the site and there are obvious problems with the cliff façade repairs, vegetation is already growing both from the drainage holes and much worse new cracks that have appeared since the paint job with vegetation growing in them.

Click here for the pictures

You don’t need to be Einstein to see that once the building is built the road between the cliff face and the back of the building is going to be too narrow to repair the cliff.
Click here for the detail from the latest plans showing this crazy two-way road that is too narrow for a car to pass a lorry.

6 comments:

  1. The Council is having a joke aren't they Micheal? I know for sure that for the past couply of year you have been mailing them...they're not doing a good enough job...I think the site should be used for a leisure use unitl a month prior to the apparent start date of tender on site 2010 (if it does...i don't believe them!) it should be temporary tennis courts..beach volley or amusements like I raised to them in the meeting last year or so! It was always fun down their from 1863-1996 with the sands station and Pleasurama/ Merrie England! We want TLC not TDC!

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  2. Than.Net I am at a total loss as to why the council persevere with it, the years of submitting bad and unworkable plans must make them realise that things are badly wrong.

    With an absentee developer it means there is no one in overall control and this causes expensive mistakes.

    So far TDC failed to pass on the EAs letter to KCC so they gave the wrong advice about the road that has been built, essentially it looks like about £1,000,000 in the bin.

    Now it looks as though the cliff façade repairs haven’t been carried out to a high enough standard.

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  3. Yes, I have certainly noticed the cliff...the grass is growing through it already...mind, if the council instructed the company who worked on it to make it look like the Dover White cliffs...then it's not far off!

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  4. Can we ask our TDC councillors if any of them have a financial interest in the Royal Sands Development - is that why the recent meetings had to be held in camera?

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  5. 16.42 you can ask all you like but it’s an offshore company, no taxes no accounts, no accountability.

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  6. I still suspect that the whole thing was a wheeze to 'get rich quick'.
    Get the site, agree some sort of planning permission and flog it on.
    Unfortunately..... no takers!

    ReplyDelete

Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.