News, Local history and Thanet issues from Michael's Bookshop in Ramsgate see www.michaelsbookshop.com I publish over 200 books about the history of this area click here to look at them.
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.
This has got to be a TDC mistake. The postcode on the planning application relates to St Lawrence high street, they have already built a new dominoes pizza takeaway near there.
ReplyDeleteI have bunged off a complaint to the council; below.
ReplyDeleteI wish to complain that the council doesn’t publish notifications of licensing applications on their website, obviously this is information that is in the public domain.
This complaint is the result of seeing a licensing application posted on 19 High Street Ramsgate, which appears to relate to 19 High Street St Lawrence, images attached.
Obviously some sort of error has occurred here.
Either the applicant for 19 High Street Ramsgate has received the wrong document from the council and posted it on the building.
Or the applicant is trying to deceive the public in some way in order to either apply for an alcohol licence where the documentation can’t be referenced with the council.
Or the applicant intends to trade in liquor illegally having gone through he appearance of obtaining a licence.
As there is no list of licensing applications on the council’s website, and no suggestion made on the notice that I would be able to check the council’s list of licensing applications, I can’t see what other course of action I have but to complain, that I can’t access the information.
In view of the closing date of the application being this Sunday, which isn’t a working day I am inclined to assume that this is a spurious application.
Could you in the first instance send me a list of the council licensing applications before the 15th of this month so I can see what has gone wrong with the applications.
Could you also ensure that in future all licensing applications are published on the council’s website so that members of the public can access them which would enable them to comment on them in instances like this one where the documentation has been posted on the wrong building and in the wrong part of Thanet.
Best regards Michael
full apllication here
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ukplanning.com/ukp/showCaseFile.do;jsessionid=47FC238CF0A2F8698479D3A808AAFC12.wam2?action=show&appType=planning%20folder&appNumber=F/TH/12/0152
5.08 this is a licensing application not a planning application, the council publishes one online and not the other, which is why I can’t check it.
DeleteMichael
ReplyDeleteRead the notice again. It refers to the soon-to-be-opened Tescos in High Street St Lawrence - there are more High Streets on the Island than just Margate and Ramsgate.
I'm usually pretty supportive of your actions but in this case I'm afraid I'm siding with Simon - you are wasting peoples' time by not reading the thing properly.
I suspect that the YTS bod who was told to stick the notice up was equally blessed with an inability to read carefully.
No conspiracy here I'm afraid.
What can one say, but Oh dear! One thing is for certain though, that no matter where this Tesco is to be built, its foundations will de dead dodgy, no one will have done an earthquake risk assessment and reams of FOI stuff will head from TDC offices towards a certain bookshop.
ReplyDeleteIn St Lawrence I think it will be pretty safe from flooding!
DeleteNope Tim I checked with the council before putting in the complaint and they have checked that the application is on the right building and was posted at the right time.
DeleteThe onus is on the applicant to post the application on the building before a statutory date, as the date for the application is on Sunday and the notification has appeared very recently, another shop was trading there about a week ago and there were no notices, I smell a rat.
Having discussed this with the council and in view of the short time frame I think the only option was a complaint, this is about the only way that they can justify investigating what may be an abuse of the licensing system.
Where the council have failed is in not making licensing information available to public, something that makes the system open to abuse.
So it is a case of you not being supportive, but the council needing the something official from a member of the public to enable them to act.
Tom, this isn’t an foi request but official feedback, which can only be a complaint or compliment, I would say in most of the cases where I have made an official feedback to the council it has been because the officer I spoke to on the phone first either asked me to directly, or intimated that it was the only way they could justify dealing with the issue.
The most significant case of this was when a contractor did some work on the old Ramsgate Gasworks that caused a cloud of dusts over the town, at the time I was engaged in communication with the geology professor writing the main work on contaminated gasworks. So I had the site reports showing the ground contained various poisons, arsenic and so on, that are used in gas manufacture.
So contacted the TDC contaminated land officer who had read the site reports too, he asked me to make an official complaint so he could justify leaving his desk and going to the site to instruct the contractor to damp it down.
Whatever would we do without you?
DeleteThe point is that residents of High Street St Lawernce will not know of the planning application but I guess without the notice on the correct premise the application will be null and void. So Michael has done the residents and the applicant a favour by bringing this to TDC's attention.
ReplyDeleteThere is a notice in St Lawrence
DeleteTim, whilst you and I do not always agree on Michael's campaigning, what worries me is how he can kick off half cock, as in this case, and promptly waste officers' time and our money in the process.
DeleteI shall waste no more of my time on this either. There has been a licensing application in St Lawrence for weeks
DeleteHere here !!
ReplyDeleteI cannot see how the council could possibile post ever single bit of information about every single bit of work that they do on the website for one person to read!!
Tesco is opening a new store in the building being constructed adjacent to the church, so perhaps they have not sufficient space in the new building and have decided to open a satellite off license. Just a thought.
ReplyDeleteThe planning application on the former High Street Gadget Corner has been put there by mistake. This premises is too small to be a Tesco. However I am currently against the Tesco being built in St Lawrence High Street as it will kill all local newsagents and local corner shops.
ReplyDeleteWhat local corner shops? The Indian restaurant? The car parts shop which opens 1 morning per week? The fish & chip shop? The Chinese take-away? I can only assume you mean Sweet Crazy, which has managed to survive having a garage at St Lawrence for many years...
ReplyDeleteActually, Tesco does operate a number of very small stores under another trading name (some set of corner shops it bought out a few years back). You wouldnt know they are tesco, or even spot any tesco goods in there, but the monye goes to Tesco. To be honest, I dont quite understand why people on these blogs hate Tesco so much? Must be all those jobs they give people - undermines Thanets reputation as a stink hole for jobless rejects?
DeleteThey're called "One-Stop"
DeleteThe Tesco in St Lawrence will effect many local stores including Sweet Crazy, Budgens garage, Dunwell Newsagents and Best One Grange Road. Sweet Crazy has survived these years but this Tesco will affect it even more. We have a tesco in Manston already which is less than a mile away and there are plenty of nearby shops for the residents of Ramsgate and St Lawrence.
ReplyDeleteNot only will the Tesco affect all these shops, but it will also ruin the appearance of the Grade I listed church which is right next to this stupid Tesco.
ReplyDeleteSo why no outcry when Budgens took over the garage? They're not exactly a small company themselves !
ReplyDeleteI do agree with the sentiments regarding the church though (although I think it's fair to say that this new building will look a lot smarter than the previous dump that was there).
Budgens is different. We are all happy for Budgens being there but we just don't need another store right opposite.
ReplyDelete