The Pleasurama Cliff Wall behind the Royal Sands Development Site in Ramsgate Again.

This picture is of firemen digging through the rubble looking for anyone buried in it last time this structure collapsed.

I went down there the other day to photograph the Great Wall vandalism and noticed something amiss with the bottom of the remaining part of the 1860 cliff structure (the bit that didn’t collapse, picture above) that concerned me, so I took the photo (below) of it and sent it off to the council’s engineer with a covering email below.

Hi Mike you may remember about a year ago we discussed the brick balustrade between the two brick pillars at the Augusta Stairs end of the Pleasurama site. This was part of the 1860 structure the rest of which collapsed in the 1960s.

I mentioned to you that the foundations had been exposed by Cardys about two years ago and were sitting on made ground and at that time Cardys had just replaced the soil they had removed covering up this defect.

You assured me that Cardys had agreed to underpin this structure with concrete and I said that I hadn’t seen any evidence of this but couldn’t check as the foundations were now covered up again.

During the last year of site abandonment the infill has settled revealing that no underpinning occurred.

I should remind you that it was this structure that I reported to you and the HSE because part of the rendering was delaminating and within a week of you assurances that the structure was sound about a hundredweight of cement fell into the site and onto the public highway from a height of about forty feet.

As far as I can tell the rendering above the exposed part goes straight over the original drainage holes in the brickwork blocking them causing water from behind the balustrade to be draining via the made ground, this combined the damage to the drain and surface topside looks potentially dangerous to me.

You will also remember several years ago assuring me that something would be done by the council to instigate the weight limit topside required by Jacobs and that something would be done to prevent vehicles from going next to the top cliff edge altogether.

Can you please let me know if any progress has been made on this front?    

Picture attached.

Please take this one as official customer feedback, requiring some sort of response within ten working days. 

Best regards Michael.

I have just had his reply, here it is:

Dear Mr Child

Customer Feedback Reference:48399/2311693

Thank you for your recent communication which was received on 19th February 2013.

You may remember the letter sent by Brian White on 15th April 2011 which confirms the existence of foundations as indicated on the original design drawings, this letter refers to the concrete façade structure adjacent to the Victorian brick abutments.  I am not aware of any issues raised by you concerning the foundations of the rendered brickwork area.  Furthermore I have visited the site since receiving your communication and cannot find evidence of settlement as you have claimed in your email.

I agree that the rendered face of the brickwork (which is quite unrelated to the foundations) does require attention although this is not classified as urgent work and is not connected with the structural performance of the wall.  Funding is being sought for the rendering work but in the meantime the fencing beneath the railing panel will remain in place as a precaution.

As you have highlighted the precautionary work to exclude vehicles from the upper promenade has not yet been undertaken.  This work will be implemented but has not yet commenced due to other priority projects.  I agree some signage at least would be beneficial and I will make sure this is progressed before the summer season.

I hope that this resolves the matter to your satisfaction.

If you are not happy with my response, you may write with your reasons within the next ten working days, requesting a further review. 

In order for the Council to respond as efficiently as possible, please ensure that you quote the above reference number and address your communication to Jean Reynolds - Customer Feedback Co-ordinator, Operational Services.

Yours sincerely

Mike ******

Engineering and Technical Services Manager

I have to admit to being a bit at a loss for words over this one.

Here is a picture of the councils Technical Services team not sorting out this part of the cliff wall after I complained about it last time. 

 over the years of the Pleasuama debacle I have done several blog posts about the cliff wall, this link will take you to a sample of them

http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=pleasurama+cliff if I get time I will write a more detailed explanation and add some more pictures. 

Anyway now for some sort of explanation here, back in 2005 the council had this unsupported chalk cliff surveyed and one aspect of this survey was a warning not to put anything heavy on the cliff top near the edge.

Since that time I have been asking the council’s engineer to get warning signs put up and since that time council vehicles, people holding events up there, even a 20 ton fire engine parked near the edge giving out Fireman Sam hats to children, you probably don’t need a diagram.     

The council are a bit sensitive about this one and back in 2009 the council’s chief executive wrote to the council’s external consulting geotechnical engineer and told him not to discuss the cliff safety issues with me.

The engineer wrote to me and said that I would need to get permission from the council before he would answer any more questions about the cliff structure.

I then wrote to the council’s chief executive asking him to write to their engineer and give him permission to continue discussing the cliff condition with me.

All of this was fairly difficult for the engineer as I had provided him with historical pictures of the cliff façade for his reports.

Here is the email sequence;

>>> <MichaelChild@aol.com>  09/12/2009 17:12 >>>
Hi Richard I think; "We  will provide  your  comments directly  to  our 
clients for their  
consideration.  If  they ask us to  discuss your concerns  with you, we
will be happy 
to do so.     Until then, we  cannot  respond in substance to the issues
you  
have   raised." is pretty clear.

Look I know no one likes this much, as it has  obviously gone badly wrong,  
but this looks like Jacobs error and not  TDCs, frankly TDC have been stung 
for  £1m and I am only trying to  sort it out for you.

With respect I am good at this sort of thing, for  instance every employee  
of Walkers received an email from me about  it, TDC officers hands  are 
just 
to tied to deal effectively with  this sort of thing, even if they  had the 
ability which I have my  doubts about.  

You  know I will do it anyway with or  without your cooperation, but it 
would be  helpful for the Jacobs  engineers to continue to talk to me as 
they 
have for  several  years.

Also if I am forced to do it the hard way it will be so much  more  
unpleasant for everyone concerned, at the moment Jacobs senior  engineer 
concurs  
with me that the cliff is dangerous and that for a  heavy fire appliance to 
be 
up  there near the edge as there was the  other day is crazy. 

What you will all do if it collapses and  kills people beggars belief, what

would you say at the inquest? 

Best regards   Michael

In a message dated 09/12/2009 17:20:32 GMT Standard Time,  
Richard.Samuel@thanet.gov.uk writes:

This  matter is under investigation as you say and the Council will act on 
any  recommendations we receive. I do not intend to conduct a dialogue with 
you on  it nor do I intend to try and second guess professional engineers 
opinions so  I suggest we leave it to people who know what they are talking 
about. The  Council is well aware of its responsibilities and will fulfill  
them.

Richard Samuel
Chief Executive
Thanet District  Council
Council Offices
Margate
Kent
CT9 1XZ
Telephone: 01843  577002
Fax: 01843 298874
Email richard.samuel@thanet.gov.uk
Web:  www.thanet.gov.uk

From: <MichaelChild@aol.com>
To: Richard Samuel <Richard.Samuel@thanet.gov.uk>

Sent: 09/12/2009 17:30:29
Subject: Re: Ramsgate cliff safety

Are you genuinely saying that you wish me to publicise that the councils  
chief executive has refused me permission to discuss a public safety issue 
with  the senior engineer consulted by the council about the issue?

Presumably you saw the photographs I took of the appalling mess down  there 
where the foundations are supposed to be.

Best regards  Michael

Subject: Re: Ramsgate cliff safety 
Date: 09/12/2009 18:19:00 GMT Standard Time 
From: Richard.Samuel@thanet.gov.uk 
Reply To:  
To: MichaelChild@aol.com 

You can speak to the council about these issues but not our contractors or advisers. That is in essence what you have been told by Jacobs. Your contact is Mike Humber or Geoff Musk. 


I made quite a lot of fuss about the façade structure over the years since the repair and the repair to the repair. In the end the council agreed to institute a maintenance and inspection regime, here is a link to the first inspection report https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0erQxRYd9_rNEQ2M3N3RjV5dms/edit?usp=sharing  

Ramsgate Cliffhanger

I have finally received the latest report on the Pleasurama cliff, here is the link http://thanetonline.com/cliff/id14.htm the picture above is of firemen digging through the rubble, looking for anyone trapped underneath it last time Ramsgate’s Eastcliff collapsed.

If you are a Thanet council taxpayer this should be of particular interest to you, it’s about three years since the council spent about £1m on the cliff, lets hope it costs a bit less this time.  

This, or something like it is going to happen every three years for the life of The Royal Sands development, it really is the only way to ensure that a 70 foot high unsupported chalk cliff is safe for the hundreds of people living in the development about 12 feet in front of it.

In view of the somewhat confused comments appearing on this post I have added a plan of the cliff façade structure, the colours showing which bits are which.

Looking at the plan (click on it compulsively to expand it) the lift is on the left the light blue line is where the site fence is that The Great Wall of Ramsgate is hung on.

The yellow green and purple line at the top is the cliff façade or cliff wall, which forms the facing to the unsupported chalk cliff.

The yellow part is what the report calls the portal section.

This is the part with shallow foundations, where the contractor has removed the dirt in front of them, it has exposed the chalky soil the foundations sit on, the report calls this “chalk sub soil”. In simple terms the concrete foundations extending a couple of metres down to the solid chalk bedrock just don’t exist. The report also says that two of the panels in this section are dangerous and will have to be hacked out and replaced.

The dark green part is what the report calls the arched section.

This is the part of the façade that was built because of the series large cliff collapses in 1937 that undermined the concrete apron at the top that holds the railings up. This part of the façade is well constructed, the foundations go down 2.5 metres below the ground.

The dark purple part is what the report calls the rendered masonry wall. 

This is the remaining part of the Victorian part of the structure the rest of this part of the façade collapsed in the 1960s and is shown in the picture at the top of the post. 

The pillars at the ends of this part have foundations extending down below the site, the middle part’s foundations were exposed by the contractor and looked as though they were sitting on a pile of earth and rubble, they have now been covered up. This part hasn’t had the upper promenade drainage improvements mentioned in the report.  

Royal Sands Development, Pleasurama Site Ramsgate another crack in the wall

 A new crack has appeared in the cliff façade up near the lift end, I don’t really know what this one signifies as it hasn’t had time to develop yet. I can’t see any signs of bulging, but as the crack doesn’t extend to the ends of the block infill panel it does look to signify lateral pressure from behind rather than the downward movement of the whole lower part of the panel.

You may need to click on the picture above to enlarge it enough to see the crack.

The whole of the portal part of the cliff façade between the lift and the arched part of the façade isn’t looking very good at the moment and I think if we have a cold winter water freezing in the various cracks could lead to considerable and expensive problems.

I will remind you that if you are a local council taxpayer you have already contributed to the £1m spent on this structure recently. 

I have added a picture with a red line around the area where the new crack has appeared for clarity.

It’s difficult to know what to say about this one how we have reached a position where we have a seventy foot high cliff in this sort of condition adjacent to a new development under construction seems to defy common sense.

There is a certain irony in the fact that were the development on schedule, there probably wouldn’t be enough space between the development and the cliff to repair the cliff wall safely.   

Dangerous Cliffs and Cliff Collapses in Ramsgate

Over the period of time that have been interested in The Royal Sands development on the old Pleasurama site, I have developed an interest and some understanding of the various cliff structures here.

This has reached the point where I can now identify situations where there are likely to be problems and have started reporting potentially dangerous situations to the various authorities that deal with this.

The last bit of dangerous cliff I reported was in October of last year, see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2010/10/is-thanet-district-council-prepared-to.html I reported this to the council, and they assured me that it was safe, as it didn’t look safe to me and there is a public footpath under one bit and the people building the Royal Sands development working under the other bit, I reported this to the Health and Safety Executive. That was at the beginning of the week, by the middle of the week nothing seem to have happened so I rang the HSE up, they told me that the council’s engineer had assured them that there wasn’t a problem and that they were going to take no further action. Over the following weekend a lump of masonry, big enough to kill someone underneath it, fell of it. Now it has safety fencing round the bottom of the cliff. 

This area of the cliff at the is a bit of a hot spot for cliff problems, I don’t think the guns helped, all shook up is phrase that come to mind.

The bit where Augusta Steps is collapsed in the 1960s whatever it is about this area of the cliff confused the civil engineers that repaired it as it collapsed again halfway through the repairs.

Pugin the architect had a bit of a problem with one of the Ramsgate cliffs, I don’t think anything else he designed actually collapsed.

He put this gallery into the cliff next to his house The Grange, so that he could observe the shipping and get down to the sea.

As you can see from the pictures it collapsed in 1947, I am not suggesting that he was an incompetent architect, just that our cliffs are not very predictable.

One of the few places that people have attempted to build against the cliff in Ramsgate is Pegwell, usually any building is incorporated into the cliff part of it being an arched structure, like the existing buildings on Harbour Parade, Marina Esplanade or beside the harbour.

As you can see this didn’t work out too well.

The power of these collapses can be quite astonishing, hundreds of tons of chalk and concrete goes where it wants to.

As you can see in the pictures of this collapse at The Paragon in 1958 the bent things are steel girders.

Finally the problem with the Royal Sands Development on the Pleasurama Site at the moment.

At the moment things are not looking so good there as the foundations seem to be missing and the concrete cliff wall undermined. I have been discussing this structure on and off with the council for some time.

The first time I noticed there was something odd about its foundations was in January 2008, at this time the council had just started the major repairs to the cliff and had contracted a firm of specialist engineers to supervise the £1m contract to repair the cliff.

I went onto the site and had a chat with the site engineer and a look at the foundations of the cliff wall, wasn’t happy with what I saw and wrote to their chief engineer who I had already supplied some historic photographs of the cliff to.

This is what he had to say:

“The foundations of the facade is on a mass concrete base some 2 metres thick and founded on what would appear to be good sound chalk. I shall be very surprised if there is any cause for concern. *** would not be party to the development works as his brief is to act as the Resident Engineer on behalf of Thanet District Council for the facade improvement works only, however he is employed by ****.

There is no need to underpin the facade, as the original site inspection showed that there is no evidence of subsidence. I will be on site on Thursday to carry out an overview of the works.”

The next time I went on the site and made a thorough inspection of the cliff wall was in November 2009, see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2009/11/royal-sands-development-how-dangerous.html this eventually resulted in a repair to the repair.

There have been other occasions but I won’t bore you with any more.

Now we have a situation once again where I have reported a problem with the cliff wall and am awaiting events. I expect sooner or later I shall be wrong and there won’t be a problem.

What worries me this time is that I have asked the council to close the footpath above the cliff because I think there possibility of a cliff collapse and a danger to human life, I have only asked them to this while they assess the situation as a precaution, so far I haven’t even had a reply from them.

Blogger is behaving a bit strangely at the moment, a lot of the anonymous comments are going into the spam folder and I haven’t deleted anyone’s comments recently, but if you comment and it doesn’t appear immediately, please accept my apologies.

There are so many pictures in this post that it was easiest to put them all at the end and label them up afterwards.     

Pictures of the collapse at The Paragon in 1958 below

Pictures of the collapse at Pegwell in 1947 below 

Pictures of the collapse at Pugin’s gallery collapse in 1947 below 

Pictures of the Augusta Steps is collapses in the 1960s below 

The guns at Wellington Crescent 

Pleasurama, Royal Sands Development Ramsgate Cliff Safety, Duty and Civil Disobedience

After my communications with the contractor earlier this week there has been some investigation of the cliff façade foundations.

The pictures should all expand if you click on them, looking at this first one taken through the site gate it appeared that not only have they cut back the chalk as far as where the pillar should continue down but have actually undermined the chalk under the pillar.

This was all too much for me, so I went on to the site, you have to appreciate that there were people walking along the cliff top path at the time. I had had assurances that the foundations were there and it certainly looked as though they were not.

 The following pictures were taken close to the pillar that has been undermined.

Here are the rest of today’s pictures from the camera card http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/netbok411/id4.htm I am a bit lost for words at the moment, obviously I have alerted Kent Fire and Rescue’s USAR team.   

Pleasurama cliff update

Work is in progress removing the loose bits of the cliff wall.

Is Thanet District Council prepared to put out lives at risk?

Of all of the strange situations that I have found myself in dealing with the council, this one I think takes the biscuit, and I have now made an official complaint about it.

On Monday I pointed out to them that there was a bit of lose masonry hanging about forty feet over people’s heads, well it’s Thursday and when I looked earlier today it was still there.

No warning sign no barriers, just hanging over a place where anyone can walk, anyone’s children play, it is just plain potty.

Hi this is a complaint relating to public safety and as such could you please deal with it expediently, please quote this reference in any reply Pleasurama complaint 71010.

The following is background to impress on you the urgency of this situation.

On 27th September 2010 I emailed the council’s engineer, chief of development services, chief executive, the officer dealing with the development and the leader of the council expressing concerns about the safety of the Pleasurama cliff.

On the same day I telephoned the HSE about the same issue, particularly with reference to the construction workers now working beneath the cliff.

On the 29th September 2010 the HSE telephoned me and told me, that they had contacted the council and that the chief of development services had assured them that there were no safety issues relating to the cliff.

During last weekend part of the cliff large enough to kill or seriously injure someone below, I would estimate that this cliff wall masonry weighed about 50 kilos fell from a height of about 15 metres, partly into the construction site and partly onto the public highway.

This has left further loose masonry hanging above where the building site joins the public highway.

On the following Monday 4th October 2010 I discussed this with the council’s engineer and was assured that some sort of action would be taken to make the site and public highway safe.

Not the proper and thorough examination of the cliff that I requested, but measures to remove the lose bits and or cordon off the area below them.

I have just visited the site and while the loose masonry is still hanging there no measures have been taken to protect the public.

I wish to complain that the council has taken no action in this instance to protect public safety and has failed in its duty of care.

Ramsgate Seafront Developments a bit of ramble

Having just phoned the architects for the slipway because their flood risk assessment just doesn’t make any sense, this is really case of time is running out to comment on the application and the flood risk assessment appears to have errors in it.

What is seems to be saying is something akin to the tallest person is four feet high, therefore we propose to build as house with all of the ceilings five feet high.

There are several examples of this in the document, here is one of them; it actually says on page eleven of the document is. “Spring tides can reach 5.4m above chart datum”.

This weeks tides see http://easytide.ukho.gov.uk/EasyTide/EasyTide/ShowPrediction.aspx?PortID=0102&PredictionLength=7 Thursday 5.4m, Friday 5.6, Saturday 5.7.

Now you would think that the architects would have something to say about this, some sort of explanation, but know it would seem that my only approach here is to use this as part of my grounds for objecting to the development.

Next door to this site is the pavilion and here they seem to be painting and filling the cracks in the outside, with no real reference to the problems inside the building.

Also this work seems to be going on without any thought to the flood protection, it would seem that a lot of money is to be spent on Margate’s flood protection, but nothing on Ramsgate’s.

I wonder if the council have read the wrong figures for a high tide in Ramsgate too, this is something that would explain quite a bit.

Over the road the building on the back of the Belgian Café is still proceeding with the windows about a metre lower that they should be according to the plans.

Back to my conversation with the architects for the slipway development, they really don’t seem to appreciate that what they are building is in fact a short pier and that the building of piers is a specialist business.

I asked about wave heights and the architect that I spoke to said that this wasn’t a problem with the Clock House, he didn’t seem to understand that the stone apron at the back of the Clock House dissipates the waves, something that doesn’t happen with a pier.

On to the Pleasurama site, all work seems to have stopped there now, understandable really now I know the sequence of events, which is.

Cardy Construction the people building the development started clearing the site about a month ago, this has exposed the bottom of the cliff wall, which frankly looks a bit dodgy.

I now know from the HSE that they expressed concerns about the cliff wall, foundations, weeds, cracks, strange damp patches and so on to the council.

The council reassured them saying that the cliff wall was perfectly safe and work continued.

Then a lump of it fell off that was big enough to kill someone below.

Now they have stopped work and left the site.

The HSE have now told me that they are going to send one of their construction engineers to visit the site.

During the war cliff maintenance, weed removal, keeping the drains clear and so on didn’t happen as people were busy fighting Hitler and after the war we had several cliff collapses in Ramsgate.

Once again and I don’t really know why cliff maintenance seems not be happening quite as it should, this is an example from another part of Ramsgate.
The picture above is of another blocked drain and illustrates what I mean about recent cliff maintenance about as clearly as I can.

The pictures below are of when this part of cliff in Ramsgate collapsed just agter the war.

The pictures apart from the one I took at the top, are courtesy of Margate Museum, click on them to enlarge them and click on them again to make them even bigger.

I should stress that this was only one of several cliff collapses in Ramsgate and that the most likely cause of them was poor maintenance.

The trouble is that once water has damaged the chalk cliff it stays damaged. It doesn’t really matter what is done to the cliff facades, it is the condition of the thousands of tons of chalk behind them that causes the problems.

In a natural state it is the sea undermines the chalk and the cliff steadily collapses at about the rate of a foot a year, so if man hadn’t intervened with sea defences then most of our famous cliff top buildings in Ramsgate would have already fallen into the sea.

I don’t fully understand the business of building foreshore and under cliff developments here in Thanet recently.

We had a spate of this mostly in Victorian times when either these were leisure buildings, most of which have now vanished, like Ramsgate and Margate piers or most of the other Thanet pavilions. Or they were major pieces of civil engineering integrated with the cliffs, like Westcliff Hall, The Winter Gardens or the arches in Ramsgate.

Now we seem to have a group of developers that only ever seem to have experience of building inland who seem to think that they can ignore the major civil engineering challenges posed by these sites and just build any old thing there.

Royal Sands Development the immediate cliff safety issues

I have spent most of today trying to get some sort of response from Thanet District Council over the safety of the cliff.

The main thing that I have been trying to achieve in the short term is to stop heavy vehicles going up onto the cliff top near the edge, until the cliff façade has been properly investigated and proven to be safe.

My obvious concern is that they are taking a considerable risk in not preventing vehicular access to the footpath above the site immediately.

My feelings are that a Catch 22 situation has developed in the council, whereby if the put up signs or barriers to prevent vehicles from going up there, they are admitting that all may not be well with the £1m contract repair that they have signed of as being done properly.

I have had an email from the council saying that the investigation work is being done by Cardy Construction the main contractor and developer’s partner in the project and that council officers were present at part of the investigation.

They have also told me that the council holds no report on the investigation work.

I have had no assurances from the council that the cliff is in fact safe, or that the façade has adequate foundations.

A big problem with man made cliff façades is that they often make the eventual collapse much worse as both enough unstable chalk has to build up behind them to cause the concrete barrier to fail and when it does the big lumps of concrete that fall tend to do a lot of damage.

The picture above is of a previous Ramsgate cliff collapse and the link leads to more pictures of collapses http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/collapse/

Royal Sands Development and Ramsgate cliff safety issues desperate measures.

I sent the following email of to the council officers in the TDC building control department this morning and am about to forward it to all the councillors, local MPs etc in the hope that someone will address the safety issues involved here.

I will ask the councillors et al for some response for publication here, as this is about the council’s attitude to public safety I am expecting some replies.

Hi ****, ***, ****, I don’t know how up to speed you are on this one, but would appreciate it if you could take a few moments to look at it and possibly even respond.

I made an foi request back on the 23.10.2009 and have had a response from **** **** which said that there was no intention to inspect the cliff façade behind the Pleasurama site until 2011, this lead me to make my own inspection, what else could I do?
Now having discovered a large bulge in the façade with a crack down the middle of it and sent the details of it to him, see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/foi/id14.htm I would expect at the very least the area above the bulge to be cordoned off, while it is investigated, can you tell me as a matter of some urgency why this hasn’t happened?
I also made a complaint about the state of the cliff supporting the upper part of the Marina Esplanade incline see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/foi/id13.htm and have just added to this web page another picture showing the movement of one of the columns more clearly, can you tell me why a temporary weight limit hasn’t been imposed on the road there, while this is investigated?

Best regards Michael

Click on the pictures to enlarge them.