A few thoughts here that come from reading today’s Isle of Thanet Gazette see http://www.thisiskent.co.uk/thanet/Ramsgate-town-council-moves-109-years/article-1797328-detail/article.html and Mark Nottingham’s blog see http://marknottingham.blogspot.com/2010/02/ramsgates-new-town-hall.htmlThe main thing that concerns me here is that this issue could divide many people who are pro Ramsgate and should be on the same side, the problem being that that the issue of saving Albion House has got confused with the issue of finding an appropriate home for our town council.
Much of this is to do with how grant funding works, the problem being that grant funding that would be available to a non government organisation, and was available for the restoration of the Custom House wouldn’t as far as I understand, be available either to TDC or RTC.
I may have misunderstood this in some way, so please correct me if I am wrong, but as I understand it there are only two ways forward for Albion House, one is to form a charitable trust that can get the grants another is to sell it to a private company that can get the grants.Now at the moment TDC are using Albion House to fight a legal battle with local residents at our expense see http://thanetstrife.blogspot.com/2010/02/expensive-tdc-fight-to-oppose-hoots.html something that I find rather depressing.
The bottom line here though is that TDC has operated a strange policy of making such services as they provide in Ramsgate fairly inaccessible and fragmented through a number of different buildings.
Their offices in York Street, The Town Partnership in York Street (another closed shop now), Albion House (a building that has to have netting on it to stop bits of it falling on people that was never given disabled access), The Tourist Information office (moved from building to building in the town until it was moved to where no tourist would be likely to find it).
I also noticed that TDC want you to pay them to film The Custom House see http://www.thanet.gov.uk/leisure__culture/filming_in_thanet/custom_house_ramsgate.aspx something I found a bit bizarre in the circumstances.
There is also a bit of a myth that Albion House has a long history of being Ramsgate’s town hall, this is just not the case, Ramsgate’s New Town Hall was in the market place on the junction of Harbour Street and Queen Street. It was the town hall from about 1840 to 1955 when it was demolished.
