The issue here is the criteria of cpos, which boils down to
taking land away from a private company or individual having to be in the
public interest, and this having to be decided not at district council level but
at UK national government level.
Always in the case of cpos if the public interest is in the
balance then the judgment is made on the side of the existing owners. So at
best from the point of view of reopening the airport you can only really have a proposal that may
or may not work, and may or may not provide significant economic benefit, I
don’t think anyone – particularly given Manston’s history of economic failure
as an airport – would or could say that any airport project on the site would
be guaranteed to succeed. On the other hand you have the site’s new owner with
a track record of succeeding with discovery parks, see http://www.wynyardpark.com/about so there is a no case to say thta thier project would definately fail.
For
a cpo to succeed you would have to go well past the balance of buying the site
by cpo for another project by a different owner being more likely to succeed.
The problem here is that sma, quite a few of the TDC
councillors and even an MP have managed to deluded themselves into the position
where they feel that TDC have some sort of ultimate power to decide whether a
cpo can take place, and seem to think that if they manage to put together some reasonable
project in a similar risk band to the one the new owner is proposing then a cpo
is likely to happen.
All that is happening at the moment is firstly, public money
and officer time is being wasted pursuing this and secondly the politicians who
haven’t worked out the situation are harming their political futures.
Essentially you have the UK government, KCC on the side of
discovery parks with virtually every part of the country trying to get them in
their area and then of course Thanet.
Anyway I bunged the above up as a comment yesterday and have
now headed this post with it because of some of the conversations I have had with
people today, this isn’t anything to do with being for or against the airport but
to do with facing reality.
Rally outside TDC offices, Margate at 18:00 2nd October. No to Houses Petition will be presented just before the full council meeting. Come and join us Michael!
ReplyDeleteSorry re commented without the error. Anon you seem so have missed the point here, the cpo isn't TDC's to grant and never was, they were only putting together a case for the UK government to decide, any case now would need to be put to the UK government, the first stage being a petition for them to consider a parliamentary debate, the threshold level being 100,000 verified UK signatures although I would think you would need many more than this, a substantial proportion of the Kent electorate as Kent was the catchment area for the airport would probably do the trick.
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The CPO was only ever going to be decided in court. It didn't matter what TDC, KCC, the government or several hundred SMA supporters and their aliases thought. It was going to be for a judge to decide. There are very tight rules and safeguards to prevent misuse of the ability to issue a CPO. You can't CPO land, because you don't like the people who own it, you don't like their plans or because you've got a new American friend who wants the land to build a holiday cottage. You can't CPO the land to create jobs, if the people who own it are already planning to create jobs. You can't CPO the land to prevent housing, when you had already engaged in discussions about housing with a potential developer. In summary, there is no possible justification for a CPO. You can't CPO the land when new owners have just announced plans. Given the scale of the project, the new owners will need to be given several years to work up their plans in conjunction with the council, before anybody can begin to opine that it's pie-in-the-sky and that a CPO might be necessary. I have heard say that some desperate pro-CPO councillors have mused that they might be able to justify the CPO by saying that they are concerned that the new owners will bank the land. They would be laughed out of court unless they have some pretty compelling evidence for such a claim. However, in reality, any attempted CPO at this stage will take many years and will cost many millions of pounds as it works its way through the legal system. If TDC want something to happen quickly, the only route open to them is to engage positively and enthusiastically with the new owners.
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ReplyDeleteI don't think you'll find that your 'petition' will be accepted by any council offers.
They have all been sent video evidence of the false claims made in order to secure signatures. So have all relevent local and national media. Try if you want to but it won't be your finest PR moment. Now that the councillors have been made aware of doubts around your latest sig.fest, they would be breaking local government codes were they to accept it.
How was it Gale/Johnston apparently knew nothing about this proposal being formulated by people just down the road and with who you might have thought they had regular contact? And if they did know, why they were telling the protesters that the airport wouldn't be allowed to close? Either way, they come out of the affair rather shabbily.
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