Tuesday 9 May 2017

Ramsgate Neighbourhood Plan and some old photo of Bellevue Road

a slightly different view of Bellevue Road to the one I published here the other day

Not sure if this is there or another corner of Ramsgate, any ideas anyone?

on to the plan

My day started in bed – always a good sign, a cuppa and I have to fess up that after I checked on the BBC website that the world was still rotating and not necessarily a figment of my imagination; yes Facebook.

A post in one of the Ramsgate groups said. “Just finished commenting on the Ramsgate Neighbourhood plan. Doesn't seem to be a lot of other comments there which is sad because it closes tomorrow 9th May.”

Aggrrraa wot plan? Putting Ramsgate Neighbourhood Plan into Google didn’t deliver the goods.



I went out and took some photos, here is the link I don't know what on earth people think of  just copying the camera card to the website

Anyway I tried the number on the TDC page and got help, having balked a bit at a website that was .is the officer managed to find a link top it on the RTC website http://www.ramsgatetown.org/ under their news items.

It seems the Ramsgate Neighbourhood Plan consultation is an Icelandic web address and the company offices in London and Los Angeles.

The consultation deadline has now been extended to the end of May.

Anyway I will try to complete the consultation at https://ramsgatetown.commonplace.is/


I though I was in for an online form, so made the following comments.


“The town: the main issue here is empty shops and the district council encouraging the town’s contraction. The cause has been, out of town shopping centre, absentee landlords, district and county council focused on regenerating Margate (pour millions into one town, e.g. Turner Contemporary and Dreamland) the rival town is bound to suffer. The district council’s latest plan of action has been to buy up an empty shop building adjacent to the main car park and convert it into social housing on the ground floor opposite a late night takeaway they have licensed to trade until 4am. Removing a viable shop and creating uninhabitable housing.

At the moment Ramsgate retains some food shops 2 butchers, 2 greengrocers 2 bakers, Waitrose, Iceland and Aldi. Much of this is based around Staffordshire Street Car Park, safe easy parking, there is also a multi story which smells of urine and many people won’t use.

I think the way forward here would be to have all three councils operating together to get the closed shops reopened.


Port and airport: the main issue here was the closure our small regional airport because of a series of economic failures and the loss of various ferry operators due to economic failures. Ramsgate’s position (surrounded mostly by sea) makes it unsuitable as a transport hub as 75% of the catchment area is sea and fish don’t buy many plane or ferry tickets.

With the airport most of the Kent catchment area is closer to M25 and associated airports. With the ferry most of the Kent catchment area is closer to the channel tunnel and the Port of Dover which is much closer to the continent by sea than Ramsgate because of the location of the Goowin Sands.

The real game changer here though is particulate air pollution and the change of attitude since the port and airport failed, at the moment the UK government is looking to ways of phasing out diesel cars because recent research shows that particulate emissions from them cause multiple illnesses from lung cancer to Alzheimer’s.

Located in the southeast (airflow over southern England and proximity to Europe) Ramsgate already has fairly high background levels of particulates and at the moment in terms of amount of fuel burnt the only worse offenders than diesel engines are ship engines and jet engines.

When we last had a ferry service you could smell the fumes in the town, (this would make you about 35% more likely to die of lung cancer.

Both town and district council have been supportive of an airfreight hub on the Manston site, just unwind of Ramsgate. Viability would be in the region of 10,000 747 type air freighter movements per year. Considering the fuel burnt in one 747 type ground movement is one tonne, this equates to part of the local regeneration plans burning 10,000 tonnes of jet fuel upwind of the town. As this would significantly reduce life expectancy in the town, a review of council support for the uses of both failed ports is needed.”


The thing however is an interactive map, you select a location and moan about it, I think. 


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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.