Pleasurama, Damaging Ramsgate Town Centre, what are the new UKIP administration up to and so on some correspondence

On Tuesday and as I hadn’t heard anything further after hearing that the customer feed back questions about Pleasurama would be dealt with early last week I sent the council the email below.

From: michaelchild@aol.com [mailto:michaelchild@aol.com]

Sent: 30 June 2015 13:06

To: Edwina Crowley; cllr-Chris Wells; casework@ico.gsi.gov.uk; TDC Customer Services; TDC FOI; Cllr-Helen Smith; Cllr-John Townend; Cllr-Suzanne Brimm; Cllr-Hunter Stummer-Schmertzing; Cllr-Lin Fairbrass

Subject: Re: Pleasurama update

Hi Edwina I think the 10 working days for the customer feedback response must be up about now, sorry to be a pain but a reply would be nice.

Best regards Michael

The reply I got said that there would be even more delays, email below.

-----Original Message-----

From: Edwina Crowley

To: 'michaelchild@aol.com' ; cllr-Chris Wells ; casework ; TDC Customer Services ; TDC FOI ; Cllr-Helen Smith ; Cllr-John Townend ; Cllr-Suzanne Brimm ; Cllr-Hunter Stummer-Schmertzing ; Cllr-Lin Fairbrass

Sent: Thu, 2 Jul 2015 11:32

Subject: RE: Pleasurama update

Dear Mr Childs

We are preparing a press release to be published so that we can keep members of the public fully informed of the current situation, this will give details of the project timeline, contact information,  an estimate of the business rates and council tax income that will be received once it is developed and confirm again the positive effect this development will have on the local economy.  This should be on our web site early next week and will give you more information.  In the meantime I answer your customer feedback questions below.

We will deal with all other requests through the FOI system which will be returned to you direct, although I note that you have received significant information before, so it will only be updates.

Regards

Edwina

To be honest my patience is running out on this one, so I bunged off the reply below, redacted, for legal reasons;

From: michaelchild
To: Edwina.Crowley ; cllr-Chris.Wells ; casework ; Customer.Services ; FOI ; Cllr-Helen.Smith ; Cllr-John.Townend ; Cllr-Suzanne.Brimm ; Cllr-Hunter.Stummer-Schmertzing ; Cllr-Lin.Fairbrass ; mstannard ; lgo
Sent: Thu, 2 Jul 2015 16:44
Subject: Re: Pleasurama update

Thank you Edwina, I look forward to reading the press release, latest doing the rounds on Facebook sic, we love Ramsgate – was friends of Ramsgate seafront, is. “The overage payment of £*** is being paid to TDC minus the cost of Cardy doing the work on the Cliff Face. As this point of payment the Freehold then changes hands and becomes Cardy's as simultaneously they will have bought out SFP. So SFP will not be a Company Registered at Companies House in the very near future..........or so we hope.”

Accurate rumour, something you have already published, something leaked from the council, I don’t know, you may wish to send mw any corrections so I can quash any unfounded rumours there.

On the foi front, I should like to stress here that the complete list of the documents (part of my request) is important to me, so I can draw a line at this point and not request documents that I have already got, it also makes it much easier for me to review documents I have been refused. I should like also to stress that I will not accept the refusal of information based on the grounds that I am asking for an opinion, which isn’t available under foi and should have been supplied as customer feedback.

Where this puts me in a difficult situation is that your opinions on the Pleasurama situation that you haven’t supplied within the 10 working days customer feedback best practice, has now been shifted to a 20 working days foi response, and in view of you previous email promising me you would deal with the customer feedback aspect in a timely manner, I am now asking for a further review of the customer feedback part of the request, as I will need this to take any issues up with the LGO.  

Best regards Michael 

Anyway there is load more email correspondence related to this I have pasted some of it below, and as it’s email the oldest is at the bottom.

From: michaelchild

To: michaelchild ; cllr-Chris.Wells

CC: Cllr-John.Townend ; Cllr-Helen.Smith ; Cllr-Suzanne.Brimm ; Cllr-Hunter.Stummer-Schmertzing ; Cllr-Lin.Fairbrass

Sent: Fri, 3 Jul 2015 14:22

Subject: King Street Refuse Collection

To TDC Cabinet Members, open letter for publication on the internet today, any replies of acknowledgments you care to make will also be published in full without any editing, unless you expressly say "Not For Publication" in the email subject field.  

OK guys, it seems you don't want to say anything about converting the ground floor of a shop in Ramsgate Town Centre to social housing, and as your administration seems to be saying that you won't comment on local issues, I can't actually tell if you are doing anything about it or intend to do anything about it. I guess my only course now it to put in a complaint to the council about it, which I will do.

One of the more peculiar actions of the previous Labour administrations was to move the domestic rubbish collection here in King Street Ramsgate, where I am trading, or at least trying to trade, from early on a Tuesday morning (6 or 7 am) to around about lunchtime on Friday, which is market day and theoretically the busiest trading day of the week.

Perhaps it was something I said to them and they hoped that this sort of action would cause me to go bankrupt and therefore stop writing them emails like this one and publishing their replies, if any, on the internet. Possibly they had so much running on Margate succeeding, that they thought anything they could do to damage Ramsgate town shopping centre, would divert people to Margate and help regeneration there. Perhaps they were just bonkers, what do you think?

Now one delight of housing people on the ground floor in a street where the takeaways are licensed until 4am, is that people regurgitate their kebabs and pizzas on your bedroom windows in the early hours of the morning, or if they are very high on whatever the have drunk or taken, they occasional put a brick through your window.

Strangely enough this results in the type of tenants that have difficulty getting accommodation elsewhere and in tern, difficult to believe I know, as the entrance to all of the apartments is on the ground floor, soon the tenants upstairs decide, that what the tenants downstairs leave in hall, means that they move out leaving the whole building full of people who can't get accommodation elsewhere.

Something endemic in tenants who have difficulty getting accommodation is that they don't bother to use their seagull proof rubbish sacks, photos attached, before and after the street cleaners who keep clearing it up (which means they can't clean up elsewhere in Ramsgate) the seagulls have a different approach to the black sack full of half eaten convenience food.    

I guess if you are familiar with Ramsgate you know the joke about nude buxom sculptures which adorn The Royal Victoria Pavilion. One night they come to life and rush round the back into the darkness for the fulfilment of their desirers, having stared - unable to move - at each other's fulsome and unadorned bodies since 1904. A few grunts and an irate squawk are heard coming from behind the Pav, followed by a voice saying. "OK, it's my turn. You hold the seagull down and I'll do it, on it."

Anyway as the UKIP shop is further up the road, you may have views on this one, perhaps one of the UKIP party members said something during the previous Labour administration that they didn’t like or didn’t agree with and this could be the reason.

So where are we going on this one guys, are you going to send out some sort of signal that you will look into the matter or even do something about it? Would it be better for me to bypass councillors altogether and use the two weeks for a reply, customer feedback system, where experience tells me that this will probably result in getting a response saying that it will be dealt with as an foi request which takes a month?

I do see that there is an inherent danger in discussing anything to do with seagulls, in case you say anything politically or environmentally incorrect, or I guess just damnright rude.                       

Best regards Michael

Websites

http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/

http://www.thanetonline.com/

-----Original Message-----

From: michaelchild

To: cllr-Chris.Wells

CC: Cllr-John.Townend ; Cllr-Helen.Smith ; Cllr-Suzanne.Brimm ; Cllr-Hunter.Stummer-Schmertzing ; Cllr-Lin.Fairbrass

Sent: Wed, 1 Jul 2015 10:54

Subject: Re: Pleasurama update

Mornin Chris, I guess nothing would give me more pleasure than a strong silent council with a decisive and reasonable plan, where we had confidence that councillors had a real grip on local issues and were quietly improving the situation.

My take is that this doesn’t appear to be happening, that councillors in the successful councils around the uk are behaving like elected representatives and not paid officers, particularly in terms of using social media to communicate with the electorate.

So say looking on your facebook page, where I would expect to find information about the new administration, links to other councillor's social media and some idea of the direction the council is hoping to move in, what I actually find is pictures of your gardening activities.

The point with my blog is that it already has a considerable local readership and I have a very good history of deleting abusive, libellous and spam comments there, so the situation where you say something and the comment becomes abusive is overcome because I delete it and there is no. "You have deleted my comment because you disagreed with it" etc for you to deal with.

This makes it a useful tool for councillors in some instances, particularly as councillors can send me information and I can publish it, saying that the information came from a councillor, without naming that councillor, which can take the personal conflicts out of the situation.

When I say that I am concerned that the councillors have gone into hiding, this isn't because of you all going very quiet, so much as the council's actions and inactions since the change of administration.

The demolition of a shop in the town centre, I would say is an action that we can all see and send out a clear message.

With the airport, as you know I have long supported a regional passenger airport at Manston, however building and airfreight hub and aircraft scrap yard under the banner of saving the airport, is another matter altogether.

My take is that where the previous Labour administration really screwed up on this one, was not holding a public consultation, with the results weighted towards TDC taxpayers. Even something simple like, do you want; passenger airport - freight hub - scrapyard - housing - light industry, would give the council some sort of mandate, to at least do their best, to do what the electorate actually want. 

With Pleasurama, it's the unexplained inaction that I think is most damaging to the council. When you were in the Conservative cabinet the conservative administration issued a press release recommending a flood risk assessment be carried out. Now the foundations for the new development there are resting on the old sand beach held in place by the 1860 council owned sea defence (I have it in writing from the council's engineer that there is no maintenance record for the sea defence). Obviously as the councils owns the sea defence, you could get a reputable firm to do a flood risk assessment there, you were a KCC councillor, so you know about doing this well or badly, when the first Turner Centre model was washed away KCC called in the top firm in the country, HR Wallingford to produce a decent flood risk assessment, why not use them, doing so would immediately resolve half the Pleasurama safety issues.

Conversely if following a Labour administration you have discovered that they have blown the kitty, then publicly announce that you are endeavouring to transfer the sea defence to the Environment Agency, I guess they would at least offer an opinion on it as the have already strongly recommend the action be taken on this one see http://michaelsbookshop.com/ea/id2.htm

Yours is the first UKIP council in the country, there is really only one direction that councils can go in should they wish to be seen as good in today's environment - openness, communication, transparency are the watchwords.

It does occur to me that you could set up a leaders blog and I could help you with the settings for dealing with adverse comment, so you would have total control over it, obviously I would be happy to help with this in any way I can, always the main problem though is either finding something to post about every day, or a new picture, which isn't of your lunch or gardening to accompany it, oh and of course dealing with the comment.                               

Best regards Michael

Websites

http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/

http://www.thanetonline.com/

-----Original Message-----

From: cllr-Chris Wells < cllr-Chris.Wells@THANET.GOV.UK>

To: michaelchild < michaelchild@aol.com>

CC: Cllr-John Townend < Cllr-John.Townend@THANET.GOV.UK>; Cllr-Helen Smith < Cllr-Helen.Smith@THANET.GOV.UK>; Cllr-Suzanne Brimm < Cllr-Suzanne.Brimm@THANET.GOV.UK>; Cllr-Hunter Stummer-Schmertzing < Cllr-Hunter.Stummer-Schmertzing@THANET.GOV.UK>; Cllr-Lin Fairbrass < Cllr-Lin.Fairbrass@THANET.GOV.UK>

Sent: Tue, 30 Jun 2015 23:24

Subject: Re: Pleasurama update

Dear Michael

You are right, the old ways of enmity and traded favours are indeed history. And that of course includes the access your good self had to information from Councillors who popped into your shop for a cup of tea, or wanted you to push a particular line in your blog.

You will hear answers when everyone else does, and not by other means.

Regards

Chris Wells

Sent from my iPad

On 30 Jun 2015, at 18:48, " michaelchild@aol.com" < michaelchild@aol.com> wrote:

John, pardon me querying this, but I am just checking that your reply was intended for publication, as I pretty sure Pleasurama comes under your portfolio.

I will be frank here, when UKIP was first elected I thought that finally the old TDC history of enmities and favours had been broken.

I became slightly worried when you elected Chris Wells as leader, partly because he was a member of the Ezekiel cabinet, partly because he appears in The Gazette bankruptcy listing which I use in my business to check potential creditors https://www.thegazette.co.uk/notice/L-60774-1991026 and partly because of his poor attendance record. 

Anyway I held back on this issue to see how the council progressed, I guess my main measurement of this was to see how the shop opposite mine progressed, as before the election Trevor Shonk was saying that this particularly piece Orwellian Labour lunacy would be resolved by the new UKIP administration if they got into power.

I guess you know that under the Labour administration the council purchased the largest and only empty shop in an otherwise fully let shopping parade which includes Ramsgate’s highest ranking restaurant on Tripadvisor, and is opposite the newly opened microbrewery pub. It is very close to the main shopping car park and the only substantial town centre car park that most women will use, the multi-storey smells of urine and certainly none of the women in my family would use it.

We expected a farmers market, but the council gave themselves planning consent to turn all of it into social housing, including bedrooms on the ground floor, with windows facing onto the pavement, in a town centre street where the same council have licensed the takeaways until 4am.

It’s hard to say if the Labour council most disliked Ramsgate or the people they intend to house there, I asked both Liz and David Green to speak against it at the planning committee, but they refused so I assumed it was a done deal.

Now the demolition continues there a pace and I haven’t seen Trevor recently, so I don’t know if anything is going on.

On Friday I opened the paper and was initially please to see that Chris Wells had a column there, until I discovered that it was about KCC the council that he failed to get elected to.

We have now reached such a point of silence from the councillors that I am beginning to wonder what, if anything is going on, when the main local employer Discovery Park recently held a presentation, there didn’t seem to be any representation from councillors, and it seems that the main priority is to engage in buying the airport using the cpo process, so that an American company fronted by a solicitor who was struck off for misappropriating clients funds, can build an airfreight hub we can’t fly from.

I guess that I should thank you as the only cabinet member who responded to my email, but frankly it just doesn’t inspire confidence that that our new councillors have done anything more than gone into hiding in case one of them should say anything politically incorrect.              

Best regards Michael

Websites

http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/

http://www.thanetonline.com/

-----Original Message-----

From: Cllr-John Townend < Cllr-John.Townend@THANET.GOV.UK>

To: michaelchild < michaelchild@aol.com>

CC: cllr-Chris Wells < cllr-Chris.Wells@THANET.GOV.UK>; Cllr-Helen Smith < Cllr-Helen.Smith@THANET.GOV.UK>; Cllr-Suzanne Brimm < Cllr-Suzanne.Brimm@THANET.GOV.UK>; Cllr-Hunter Stummer-Schmertzing < Cllr-Hunter.Stummer-Schmertzing@THANET.GOV.UK>; Cllr-Lin Fairbrass < Cllr-Lin.Fairbrass@THANET.GOV.UK>

Sent: Tue, 30 Jun 2015 16:52

Subject: Re: Pleasurama update

Michael

I am in receipt of your email and will follow this up with Edwina Crowley.

 Regards 

John Townend

Sent from my iPad

On 30 Jun 2015, at 13:46, " michaelchild@aol.com" < michaelchild@aol.com> wrote:

To all TDC cabinet members, I am just wondering what is going on here, in the past council emails for publication on my blog, which gets about 1,000 reads a day that were CCd to cabinet members always elicited numerous responses from cabinet members, some for publication and some marked as not for publication.

Obviously this is a reasonable request about a significant local issue that is the result of various failings by previous administrations, so I am wondering why I haven't heard anything from any of you

Could you at least kindly acknowledge the receipt of this email so I can be sure your email accounts are actually working?      

Best regards Michael

Websites

http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/

http://www.thanetonline.com/

-----Original Message-----

From: michaelchild < michaelchild@aol.com>

To: Edwina.Crowley < Edwina.Crowley@THANET.GOV.UK>; cllr-Chris.Wells < cllr-Chris.Wells@THANET.GOV.UK>; casework < casework@ico.gsi.gov.uk>; Customer.Services < Customer.Services@THANET.GOV.UK>; FOI < FOI@THANET.GOV.UK>; Cllr-Helen.Smith < Cllr-Helen.Smith@THANET.GOV.UK>; Cllr-John.Townend < Cllr-John.Townend@THANET.GOV.UK>; Cllr-Suzanne.Brimm < Cllr-Suzanne.Brimm@THANET.GOV.UK>; Cllr-Hunter.Stummer-Schmertzing < Cllr-Hunter.Stummer-Schmertzing@THANET.GOV.UK>; Cllr-Lin.Fairbrass < Cllr-Lin.Fairbrass@THANET.GOV.UK>

Sent: Tue, 30 Jun 2015 13:06

Subject: Re: Pleasurama update

Hi Edwina I think the 10 working days for the customer feedback response must be up about now, sorry to be a pain but a reply would be nice.

Best regards Michael

Websites

http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/

http://www.thanetonline.com/

-----Original Message-----

From: Edwina Crowley < Edwina.Crowley@THANET.GOV.UK>

To: ' michaelchild@aol.com' < michaelchild@aol.com>; cllr-Chris Wells < cllr-Chris.Wells@THANET.GOV.UK>; casework < casework@ico.gsi.gov.uk>; TDC Customer Services < Customer.Services@THANET.GOV.UK>; TDC FOI < FOI@THANET.GOV.UK>; Cllr-Helen Smith < Cllr-Helen.Smith@THANET.GOV.UK>; Cllr-John Townend < Cllr-John.Townend@THANET.GOV.UK>; Cllr-Suzanne Brimm < Cllr-Suzanne.Brimm@THANET.GOV.UK>; Cllr-Hunter Stummer-Schmertzing < Cllr-Hunter.Stummer-Schmertzing@THANET.GOV.UK>; Cllr-Lin Fairbrass < Cllr-Lin.Fairbrass@THANET.GOV.UK>

Sent: Wed, 17 Jun 2015 14:05

Subject: RE: Pleasurama update

Dear Mr Childs,

We confirm receipt of your email.

This request will be considered under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and uploaded through our system to deal with this, we will provide a response through this system to you within the 20 day period.

Im caught up most of this week but will  respond on the other matters early next week.

Regards

Edwina

Edwina Crowley MRICS

Head of Economic Development and Asset Management

Thanet District Council

PO Box 9, Cecil Street

Margate

Kent   CT9 1XZ

Tel:  01843 577646

Mob:  07810 507140

From: michaelchild@aol.com [mailto:michaelchild@aol.com]

Sent: 17 June 2015 13:52

To: Edwina Crowley; cllr-Chris Wells; casework@ico.gsi.gov.uk; TDC Customer Services; TDC FOI; Cllr-Helen Smith; Cllr-John Townend; Cllr-Suzanne Brimm; Cllr-Hunter Stummer-Schmertzing; Cllr-Lin Fairbrass

Subject: Pleasurama update

Hi Edwina, please ensure I receive conformation of your receipt of this email today.

This email is a request for an update on the situation with the Pleasurama development in Ramsgate, as I don’t know what the current situation is apart from there having been no activity on the site, when I guess activity was expected, it will have to be a fairly general request.

Under foi legislation:

1 Could you please send me any documents relating to the Pleasurama development that have become available since you last email below?

2 As I don’t know what documents have been withheld from me and why and what documents would be available to me if I knew what to ask for, could you please send me a complete list of the Pleasurama Royal Sands documents that the council have on file?

As a customer feedback request:

1 Could you please explain to me the councils opinion as to where we stand with this project, especially: a Is it perceived as being on schedule, b Is it perceived as deliverable, c Is it perceived as economically and environmentally viable.

2 With reference to your statement in the email below, relating to ongoing cliff façade maintenance for the life of the development "and the access is considered satisfactory for maintenance purposes." Is this based on any concrete information e.g. survey or engineers report? I am particularly concerned here about the council's liability to maintain this structure for what is likely to a period of around 100 years i.e. the life of the development and whether the council would have some form of redress if it proved impossible or prohibitively expensive to maintain the cliff façade from the three metre gap below. As we know from the 2005 engineers report a tower crane can't be used from above.

3 With reference to your statement in the email below: "We are currently considering the recent report, and are planning other investigations but have not completed these yet which is why you have no information on them." Is there any progress and have there been other investigations?  

Best regards Michael

Websites

http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/

-----Original Message-----

From: Edwina Crowley

To: 'Michael Child' ; iris.johnston ; cllr-Elizabeth Green

CC: TDC Customer Services ; cllr-David Green ; cllr-Simon Moores ; cllr-Richard Everitt ; cllr-Mike Harrison ; Paul Cook ; Ged Lucas ; Steven Boyle

Sent: Fri, 6 Feb 2015 16:45

Subject: RE: customer feedback request

Dear Mr Childs,

I understand I missed your call but understand that you are asking for a response in connection with your email below.

We have sent you all the reports we have in connection with the cliff wall.  We are currently considering the recent report, and are planning other investigations but have not completed these yet which is why you have no information on them.

I don’t have anything further to add at this stage, it is all work in progress and there really is nothing new to report.

Regards

Edwina

Edwina Crowley MRICS

Head of Economic Development and Asset Management

Thanet District Council

PO Box 9, Cecil Street

Margate

Kent   CT9 1XZ

Tel:  01843 577646

Mob:  07810 507140

From:   Michael Child [mailto:michaelchild@aol.com]

Sent: 26 January 2015 14:36

To: Edwina Crowley; iris.johnston@btinternet.com; cllr-Elizabeth Green

Cc: TDC Customer Services; cllr-David Green; cllr-Simon Moores; cllr-Richard Everitt; cllr-Mike Harrison; Paul Cook; Ged Lucas

Subject: Re: customer feedback request

Hi Edwina

Thank you for the report you sent me.

I am sorry to say I am not entirely happy with your response and am therefore seeking a further review.

With respect to the flood risk, three factors have occurred since planning consent, one is that Ramsgate sands have become significantly denuded greatly reducing the protection to the 1860 sea defence fronting the site, the second being the change from pile bored foundations to the development to pad foundations on sand held in place by the sea defence and third the EA letterhttp://www.michaelsbookshop.com/ea/id2.htm

I does occur to me that I could make economic sense for the council to have an independent fra made of the area as it is the council and not the developer that liable for maintaining the sea defence. The company usually used by local authorities for this is http://www.hrwallingford.com/ they did the fra for Turner Contemporary.

When I spoke to you on the telephone you told me that there would be a seismic survey and I haven’t received the results of this from you.

You also said that this would be an independent survey, however what you sent me is a survey by East Kent Engineering Partnership, essentially the same council officers who signed off the main repair contract that has proved to have been faulty. [Coating badly applied, significant panel failure within a couple of months of the contract ending]

I also note that the report you have sent me seems to be saying by omission, inasmuch as it describes the condition of the foundations for the arched part of the façade, that the foundations for the portal part of the façade shown on the design drawings do not in fact exist in reality and this would appear to need underpinning.

There are several other significant and observable issues that the report has omitted covering, these include the surface of the cliff top above the brick and render part of the façade, the foundation of the centre balustrade the brick and render part of the façade which has been exposed and appears to be on made ground and in need of underpinning.

Can you please confirm the position regarding an independent structural engineers report on the condition of the cliff façade?   

My understanding is that Cardy Construction commissioned an independent report when they started work on the foundations back in 2009/10 and that this report resulted in site workers examining the façade for movement prior to starting work each day for signs of movement, can you please send me a copy of this report and any other reports on the cliff that I haven’t got?

All of the reports I have got are published here in a series of linked pages links at the top http://thanetonline.com/cliff/

Your point that the gap between the development of the cliff façade (4 metres) is sufficient to allow for maintained of the cliff façade for the life of the development is “considered satisfactory” requires further clarification.

Can you please send me the report stating how much space is need between the development and the cliff to allow for future maintenance of the cliff façade?

Obviously during the expected life of the development [80 to 100 years] parts of the façade will have to be removed and replaced and the cost of doing so is most likely to fall on the local authority. I assume that the viability and cost of these repairs are a matter of public interest.

Your point on the withholding information for legal reasons, can you please confirm that this would cover issues relating to the civil engineering of the site infrastructure and the structural integrity of the cliff façade? 

Regards Michael.

On 20/01/2015 07:47, Edwina Crowley wrote:

Dear Michael,

Thank you for this, we have only just received the final report back and it is attached for your information.  Our Engineers are reviewing and will be taking action as necessary.

The scheme has full planning permission to be built out, there is no legal requirement to do a flood risk assessment, and the access is considered satisfactory for maintenance purposes.

At present we are still undertaking a mediation process the details cannot be shared due to legal reasons, however please rest assured that we have informed the HSE of our negotiations and they will be kept informed and asked to visit should the legal’s complete satisfactorily.  We would also ensure a rigorous programme of works that would take into account access and egress limitations and work with the developer to ensure adequate flood risk protection.

I trust this answers your questions.

Regards

Edwina

Edwina Crowley MRICS

Head of Economic Development and Asset Management

Thanet District Council

PO Box 9, Cecil Street

Margate

Kent   CT9 1XZ

Tel:  01843 577646

Mob:  07810 507140

From:   michaelchild@aol.com [mailto:michaelchild@aol.com]

Sent: 19 January 2015 19:33

To: iris.johnston@btinternet.com; cllr-Elizabeth Green

Cc: TDC Customer Services; Edwina Crowley; cllr-David Green; cllr-Simon Moores; cllr-Richard Everitt; cllr-Mike Harrison; Paul Cook

Subject: Re: customer feedback request

Thanks Iris, I think the questions were simple, relevant and as most of the cost of maintaining the infrastructure surrounding the development is likely to fall to the council after is built need answering.   

Best regards Michael

Websites

http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/

http://www.thanetonline.com/

-----Original Message-----

From: Iris johnston

To: cllr-Elizabeth Green

CC: michaelchild ; TDC Customer Services ; Edwina Crowley ; cllr-David Green ; cllr-Simon Moores ; cllr-Richard Everitt ; cllr-Mike Harrison ; Paul Cook

Sent: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 18:17

Subject: Re: customer feedback request

Thank you and sincere apologies Michael,

Liz thank you also for following up.

Please let me know why the delay.

Regards,

Iris

Sent from my iPad

On 19 Jan 2015, at 15:36, cllr-Elizabeth Green wrote:

Hi Michael

Thanks for your email and I can promise you I will look into this immediately and get back to you.

Kind regards

Liz

Sent from my iPad

On 19 Jan 2015, at 14:40, "michaelchild@aol.com" wrote:

Ok chaps my patience has run out on this one, as you can see the initial email on 15 th December 2014 was ccd to the information commissioners office who confirmed they had received it.

Frankly now it doesn’t matter if you are treating it as a foi request or the customer feedback request I originally asked for the time has run out. 

I am expecting confirmation of your receipt of this email and some sort of definite time scale as to when a reply will be forthcoming by return. 

The alternative is the adverse publicity, which I know you can do without and my taking up the request with the information commissioner which wastes both your time and mine. 

Best regards Michael

Websites

http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/

http://www.thanetonline.com/

-----Original Message-----

From: TDC Customer Services

To: michaelchild

Sent: Thu, 8 Jan 2015 11:03

Subject: RE: customer feedback request

Good morning

Thank you for your email. I have passed the details through to Edwina Crowley for you today who will respond to you directly.

Kind regards

Customer Services

Thanet District Council

Telephone : 01843 577000

Fax: 01843 577593

www.thanet.gov.uk

email customer.services@thanet.gov.uk

From:   michaelchild@aol.com [mailto:michaelchild@aol.com]

Sent: 07 January 2015 14:39

To: TDC Customer Services

Subject: Fwd: customer feedback request

Best regards Michael

Websites

http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/

http://www.thanetonline.com/

-----Original Message-----

From: michaelchild

To: customer.services ; casework

Sent: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 11:37

Subject: customer feedback request

 I am writing to you for an update on the Pleasurama site, mainly as there is a certain amount of rumour circulating on the internet.

There are four main areas of interest relating to the civil engineering infrastructure of the project and updates on any of them would be useful at this time.

1 The cliff façade condition survey; is there any progress on this? And if there are any reports that are in the public domain can you please send them to me by email?

2 The flood risk and structural integrity of the sea defence, has any investigation been made into this? The latest information I have on this that the EA strongly recommended a flood risk assessment. Mike Humber emailed me telling me that the sea defence dated from 1860 and the council while being responsible for the maintenance of the sea defence hold no plans or maintenance record for it. This is particularly important now the construction method has been changed from bored piles to pad foundations sitting on sand held in place by the sea defence.

3 Cliff maintenance access, has any assessment been made to ascertain if there is enough space between the proposed development and the cliff façade to maintain the cliff façade for the life of the development? Important as the various surveys of the façade describe it as having a short serviceable life.

4 Road access, has any investigation been made into the psv and hgv access for the development? Mostly this relates to the Marina Road inclined viaduct, which as far as I can see from the plans is to be used for psv and hgv access for the development, once the development is built, despite KCC signing it as unsuitable for construction hgvs.    

Please note I have also sent the above directly to Edwina Crowley.  

Best regards Michael

Websites

http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/

http://www.thanetonline.com/