The main thing that concerns me here is that this issue could divide many people who are pro Ramsgate and should be on the same side, the problem being that that the issue of saving Albion House has got confused with the issue of finding an appropriate home for our town council.
Much of this is to do with how grant funding works, the problem being that grant funding that would be available to a non government organisation, and was available for the restoration of the Custom House wouldn’t as far as I understand, be available either to TDC or RTC.
Now at the moment TDC are using Albion House to fight a legal battle with local residents at our expense see http://thanetstrife.blogspot.com/2010/02/expensive-tdc-fight-to-oppose-hoots.html something that I find rather depressing.
The bottom line here though is that TDC has operated a strange policy of making such services as they provide in Ramsgate fairly inaccessible and fragmented through a number of different buildings.
Their offices in York Street, The Town Partnership in York Street (another closed shop now), Albion House (a building that has to have netting on it to stop bits of it falling on people that was never given disabled access), The Tourist Information office (moved from building to building in the town until it was moved to where no tourist would be likely to find it).
I also noticed that TDC want you to pay them to film The Custom House see http://www.thanet.gov.uk/leisure__culture/filming_in_thanet/custom_house_ramsgate.aspx something I found a bit bizarre in the circumstances.
TDC officers lead by Richard Samuels did everything they could to stymie and delay RTC, and now they are trying to make it as expensive as possible for the Ramsgate tax payer.
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