Manston comment on the TDC website done

I fought with the TDC planning website and eventually won

Mr Michael Child,

You have been sent this email because you or somebody else has submitted a comment on a Planning Application to your local authority using your email address. A summary of your comments is provided below.

Comments were submitted at 3:36 PM on 08 Jul 2016 from Mr Michael Child.

Application Summary
Address:	Manston Airport Manston Road Manston RAMSGATE Kent
Proposal:	Comprehensive redevelopment of the site involving the demolition of existing buildings and structures and removal of hard standing and associated infrastructure, and provision of mixed use development. Application submitted in hybrid form (part-outline and part-detailed). The outline element comprises an outline planning application (with all matters except Access reserved for future determination) for the provision of buildings/floorspace for the following uses; Employment (Use Classes B1a-c/B2/B8), Residential (Use Classes C3/C2), Retail (Use Classes A1-A5), Education and other non-residential institutions (Use Class D1), Sport and Recreation (Use Class D2), Hotel (Use Class C1), Open space/landscaping (including outdoor sport/recreation facilities), Car Parking, Infrastructure (including roads and utilities), Site preparation and other associated works. The full/detailed element of the application comprises; change of use of retained existing buildings, Development of Phase 1 comprising four industrial units (Use Class B1c/B2/B8) with ancillary car parking and associated infrastructure, Access.
Case Officer:	Iain Livingstone
Click for further information

Customer Details
Name:	Mr Michael Child
Email:	michaelchild@aol.com
Address:	72 King Street, RAMSGATE, Kent CT11 8NY

Comments Details
Commenter Type:	Member of the Public
Stance:	Customer made comments in support of the Planning Application
Reasons for comment:	- Other - give details
Comments:	Please note that I have had considerable difficulties with the council's planning application site, detailed first. 1 There is no date by which comments have to be received, of the various dates that have been published in social media, today's date 8th July 2016 seemed the most common, although it doesn't appear on the important dates page https://planning.thanet.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=dates&keyVal=O5Z2F2QE00300 in the end I had to phone the council - which took about a quarter of an hour of waiting - and got confirmation that comments have to be in by midnight tonight. 2 The documents, 404 at the time of writing are not numbered, making it very nearly impossible to work out which ones you have opened and read. 3 The site times out or just becomes unavailable unexpectedly. I am supporting this application based entirely on its own merit, making the assumption that the council has failed to find an airport operator to partner it in a cpo and therefore has no other viable future for the Manston site. The only other possibility on the table appears to be the DCO, at the pre application stage, being made to the DFT by the American real-estate broker already rejected by the council and therefore likely to be rejected by the DFT for similar reasons. The published (uk gov planning website) remit being:- The upgrade and reopening of Manston Airport primarily as a cargo airport, with some passenger services, with a capacity of at least 12,000 air cargo movements per year. My understanding is that in the unlikely event that the DCO were to proceed approval of this application would have little or no effect on the DCO. While I have consistently supported a regional airport at Manston I consider that an airfreight hub would detrimental to Thanet, both economically and environmentally. Looking at many of the other comments here there seems to be a perception that this is a decision between an airport and no airport. In reality within the remit of Thanet's local planning this appears to be a decision between the site owners plans and continuing with a disused site while waiting for unlikely alternatives outside of the council's gift. Here in Thanet, where often past potential investors have been poorly assessed by the council, leaving various undeveloped sites, Pleasurama being an example, any developer's track record is of primary importance. In this case the applicant has good local track record and already own Sandwich Discovery Park, providing employment for around 2,000 local people. In terms of the main aspects of the application that are my reasons for supporting it, they are:- 85,000 square meters of manufacturing space aiming to provide 2,000 skilled jobs. 2,500 houses (this needs to be taken within the government remit that TDC has to find land for just under 16,000 homes). Land and funding for two primary schools and funding for secondary school pupils. East Kent Sports. I also note that there is also scope within the application for application for community facilities such as a GP surgery, community centre and local shops.

Tomorrow Friday 8th July 2016 is the last day to comment on the Stone Hill Park plans for the Manston airport site.

The future of the Manston Airport site is one of the most significant decisions for the future of Thanet as a whole and there are various possibilities as to what may happen to the site, the most likely seems to be the current owners developing the site, which is what this outline application is for.

The first factor in any large development plans is do the developers have any track record and are they likely to carry out roughly what they are asking for planning consent to do.

In this case the owners are also the owners of Discovery Park as Sandwich, which has become the main centre of quality employment in this area, they took over the running of discovery park when the previous owner decided to pull out and have achieved pretty much what they said they would there.

Their plans for Manston are for a mixed use site, quality housing and high speck light industrial unites.

They include, 85,000 square meters of manufacturing space aiming to provide 2,000 skilled jobs, 2500 houses (this needs to be taken within the government remit that TDC has to find land for just under 16,000 homes), land and funding for two primary schools and funding for secondary school pupils, an East Kent Sports Village, wave garden, there is also scope within the application for application for community facilities such as a GP surgery, community centre and local shops.

The bottom line being that a company with a good local track record who already own a local development providing employment for around 2,000 people want to build another development doing something similar. You may wish to look at their plans and comment on them.

Links

Stone Hill Park website http://www.stonehillpark.co.uk/

The application on Thanet Council’s website https://planning.thanet.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=summary&keyVal=O5Z2F2QE00300

You can comment online, on the council’s website (before midnight tomorrow), if you can get it to work, if you can’t you can email your comments to the council, your email must be sent by midnight tomorrow and must include your name and address, contact phone number also recommended, here is the planning department’s email address planning.services@thanet.gov.uk

The council’s planning website is a tenuous and unreliable piece of technology, inclined to time out and say the page is unavailable so I would recommend trying to look at other comments there and then typing your own comment out in MS Word or some other word processing program before you start your personal battle with their website.

I did email the council essentially asking them if there was much point in bothering to comment, here is my eamil:-

Re my phone call about comments on using the new planning website; I am writing to request the information that wasn’t immediately at hand to the officer I spoke to, at his request.

With respect to public comments, (these were not previously published in the way they are on the new planning site) meaning that the way they are handled is pertinent to using responding to applications.

1 Comments appear either to have the respondents name and address redacted to the street name, or to have no respondents name or address. Does this mean where comments have no respondents name or address that neither were supplied to the council, and if so are these valid comments?

2 Are the comments weighted to the respondents location, and if so by what method? To expand on this would UK taxpayers opinions be of more significance that those of foreign nationals and TDC council taxpayers and local residents be of the most significance?

3 Does the council have some method of ensuring that multiple comments are not made by one respondent under different aliases? For instance, without one, the applicant could make multiple comments supporting their application and so influence the planning committee.   

As discussed on the phone it is my intention to comment of some live applications, using your new website, and as these have relatively short time windows during which I can comment, your prompt reply would be much appreciated.

And here is the council’s reply:-

"Dear Mr Child

Thank you for your email. We appreciate that the Manston Airport Application is large and that the website might timeout when viewing all the documents. We are working with providers to improve this, and the application is also available to view in hardcopy in the Gateway.

All comments that come through our public access are passed to the planning officer responsible for the application. We do not accept comments without the customer name and address information being provided. The system automatically redacts all of the personal information from the comments available to view online, due to data protection legislation, which means that this information does not show on the website.

The Council is legally obliged to take into account the comments from members of the public and other interested parties when deciding all planning applications. Furthermore, the Council encourages local residents to have their say in planning matters. However, it is important to remember that the Council is responsible for making the final decision on the application and for deciding how much “weight” comments have on its final decision.

Regards

Mandie McKenzie

Principal Technical Officer

Thanet District Council"       

Tomorrow Friday 8th July 2016 is the last day to comment on the Stone Hill Park plans for the Manston airport site.

The future of the Manston Airport site is one of the most significant decisions for the future of Thanet as a whole and there are various possibilities as to what may happen to the site, the most likely seems to be the current owners developing the site, which is what this outline application is for.

The first factor in any large development plans is do the developers have any track record and are they likely to carry out roughly what they are asking for planning consent to do.

In this case the owners are also the owners of Discovery Park as Sandwich, which has become the main centre of quality employment in this area, they took over the running of discovery park when the previous owner decided to pull out and have achieved pretty much what they said they would there.

Their plans for Manston are for a mixed use site, quality housing and high speck light industrial unites.

They include, 85,000 square meters of manufacturing space aiming to provide 2,000 skilled jobs, 2500 houses (this needs to be taken within the government remit that TDC has to find land for just under 16,000 homes), land and funding for two primary schools and funding for secondary school pupils, an East Kent Sports Village, wave garden, there is also scope within the application for application for community facilities such as a GP surgery, community centre and local shops.

The bottom line being that a company with a good local track record who already own a local development providing employment for around 2,000 people want to build another development doing something similar. You may wish to look at their plans and comment on them.

Links

Stone Hill Park website http://www.stonehillpark.co.uk/

The application on Thanet Council’s website https://planning.thanet.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=summary&keyVal=O5Z2F2QE00300

You can comment online, on the council’s website (before midnight tomorrow), if you can get it to work, if you can’t you can email your comments to the council, your email must be sent by midnight tomorrow and must include your name and address, contact phone number also recommended, here is the planning department’s email address planning.services@thanet.gov.uk

The council’s planning website is a tenuous and unreliable piece of technology, included to time out and say the page is unavailable so I would recommend trying to look at other comments there and then typing your own comment out in MS Word or some other word processing program before you start your personal battle with their website.

I did email the council essentially asking them if there was much point in bothering to comment, here is my eamil:-

Re my phone call about comments on using the new planning website; I am writing to request the information that wasn’t immediately at hand to the officer I spoke to, at his request.

With respect to public comments, (these were not previously published in the way they are on the new planning site) meaning that the way they are handled is pertinent to using responding to applications.

1 Comments appear either to have the respondents name and address redacted to the street name, or to have no respondents name or address. Does this mean where comments have no respondents name or address that neither were supplied to the council, and if so are these valid comments?

2 Are the comments weighted to the respondents location, and if so by what method? To expand on this would UK taxpayers opinions be of more significance that those of foreign nationals and TDC council taxpayers and local residents be of the most significance?

3 Does the council have some method of ensuring that multiple comments are not made by one respondent under different aliases? For instance, without one, the applicant could make multiple comments supporting their application and so influence the planning committee.   

As discussed on the phone it is my intention to comment of some live applications, using your new website, and as these have relatively short time windows during which I can comment, your prompt reply would be much appreciated.

And here is the council’s reply:-

"Dear Mr Child

Thank you for your email. We appreciate that the Manston Airport Application is large and that the website might timeout when viewing all the documents. We are working with providers to improve this, and the application is also available to view in hardcopy in the Gateway.

All comments that come through our public access are passed to the planning officer responsible for the application. We do not accept comments without the customer name and address information being provided. The system automatically redacts all of the personal information from the comments available to view online, due to data protection legislation, which means that this information does not show on the website.

The Council is legally obliged to take into account the comments from members of the public and other interested parties when deciding all planning applications. Furthermore, the Council encourages local residents to have their say in planning matters. However, it is important to remember that the Council is responsible for making the final decision on the application and for deciding how much “weight” comments have on its final decision.

Regards

Mandie McKenzie

Principal Technical Officer

Thanet District Council"       

Manston update, a watercolour sketch of Ramsgate and advice to young people from the bookshop.

I had breakfast 8 to 9 am and lunch 12 to 1 at Ship Shape café which is at Ramsgate Harbour arches, while I was there I started a watercolour sketch looking southwest i.e. with the sun mostly behind me.

Very reasonable café prices, the toast, marmalade and cup of tea was £2 and the all day breakfast £4.

Here is the watercolour sketch so far and below the photos I took to record this in chronological order.

On the Manston front the update relates to the new material that has appeared today on the TDC planning website at https://planning.thanet.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=documents&keyVal=O5Z2F2QE00300 before you go there it is as well to note that the website is unpredictable and often pages won’t open. Patience is the key here.

This information relates to the site owner, Discovery Park’s application for a mixed use development to provide housing and employment.

This new information is responses from members of the public and other interested parties to the planning application (you can submit a response to this application using the council’s website) responses so far either support the application are against the application or are neutral.  

The aspect of this that I don’t understand is that while some of the applications have the respondents name and the beginning of their address redacted. Others just say this information isn’t available.

This is an example.

With tdc planning applications anyone can support or object to them, they don’t have to be Thanet council taxpayers or Thanet residents, but what concerns me is more here is that if the council don’t have a name and address for respondents it may be possible for some people to object to support the application multiple times. This tdc planning website is a new one and the way online responses are now handled is different to the old one.

On the bookshop front I have spent the last two days processing books that I have bought for stock in my bookshop, I think my bookshop is fairly unique inasmuch as we publish details about what we are up to on the internet. One of us takes pictures of all of the books after we have priced them and before we put them on the shelves and we publish these pictures online at the end of every working day here http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/

As a bookshop we have a fairly broad price structure, in the last couple of weeks the cheapest book I have sold in the shop was 5p and the dearest £1,000.

Today the cheapest book I priced was 5p

This is a picture of all today's reject books that we will sell for either 5p or 10p or they will go off for paper recycling.

The dearest book I priced today was £95 (pictures below) about tools

The dearest novel this one, like Noddy early PG Wodehouse is identified by the books on flaps of the dustjacket, I think this one will be about £50.

The crazy ones the two very large children’s books, too big to go on our shelves, so on the table in the children’s section.   

Manston, correct me if I’m wrong – another update, perhaps.

As most people are probably aware the largest single Thanet issue that is likely to affect the future of those of us who live here is what happens to the closed Manston Airport site.

In terms of social media sites discussion on the internet about the future of Manston has degenerated to point where most people have left and all that remain seem to be those who think:-

All airports are good

All airports are bad

All housing is good

All housing is bad

All business parks are good

All business parks are bad.

As pretty much all of us live in housing, ultimately derive our income from what we manufacture, fly when we travel long distances and consume commodities imported by aircraft. Then I guess we have names for these people.   

As for running down the main local employer, not exactly the best way to make friends and influence people here in Thanet. 

There are several possible futures for the Manston site, which I will detail here first as several people I have spoken to seem to have confused one with another.

The first and probably the most likely to happen are the plans of the current owners who already operate Discovery Park at Sandwich. Discovery Park is where most people are employed locally. If I say they are the largest local employer I am most likely to encounter a pedant, so. Discovery Park at Sandwich comprises more than 130 companies employing over 2,400 people from established organisations to emerging start-ups in the fields of life science, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, science and technology.  

Their plans are for a mixed use development about 2,500 homes and a business park employing about 4,000 people.

Here is the Sandwich. Discovery Park website http://www.discovery-park.co.uk/

And here is their website for the Manston development http://www.stonehillpark.co.uk/

The Q and As go roughly like this.

Can they deliver it? I would think the answer to this one is basically yes based on what they have already delivered at Sandwich.

What are the snags? Mainly environmental, particularly as the site is on top of one of the drinking water reservoirs called a chalk aquifer. We have pretty much resolved the issues associated with putting homes on the aquifer but putting light industry on top of them is more difficult, involves complex and expensive drainage systems and in some areas has lead to contamination so bad that the water from them can’t be used.

Another possible contender for developing the site is an American real estate hedge fund broker RiverOak Investments.

Their plans are for cargo airport, with some passenger services, with a capacity of at least 12,000 air cargo movements per year.

As the don’t own the site and the current owners don’t want to sell it they would have to go down the road of getting some part of government to compulsory purchase the site from the current owners before they could turn the site into a cargo airport. 

The tried this first with Thanet District Council, the plan being that the council would buy the site using cpo powers and that RiverOak would fund the purchase, this fell through I think mainly because RiverOak weren’t able to comply with the strict criteria for funding with which local councils have to operate. The other factors seemed to be that as a funding company (one that puts together the majority of their funding from third parties) they weren’t able to put together sufficient funds in a UK bank account and the council didn’t seem to think that there was a compelling enough case for a cpo to be granted.

RiverOak are now trying a different level of government (national) to achieve a cpo this is “National Infrastructure Planning” which is how the government acquire land for roads, railways, ports and indeed airports. When a private company wants to build something that is or maybe considered as a national asset, providing that they can convince the civil servants that it is significant enough economically (with airports this means millions of passengers or thousands of freight aircraft movements a year) then the DFT (Department for Transport) may consider an application for a DCO (Development Consent Order).    

The idea of a DCO is to bypass a lot of the red tape and different levels and departments of government so we can get major infrastructure projects like roads, railways, ports and indeed airports build relatively quickly.

The DFT have considerable powers under a DCO, they can use a cpo to take land from the owners, they can overrule aspects of the planning process and an extent they can limit the compensation paid to people affected by the pollution generated by projects like roads, railways, ports and indeed airports.

Weighed against this is that the bar for the DFT even accepting an application for a DCO is fairly high. The applicant would need to prove that they could achieve what they say they want to achieve fairly conclusively and that they have the resources to achieve this in terms of money and experience.   

Here is RiverOak’s main (parent company’s) website http://www.riveroakic.com/

Here is RiverOak’s UK website http://www.riveroakinvestments.co.uk/

Here is the part of the DFT website where information about the Manston DCO application is published http://infrastructure.planninginspectorate.gov.uk/projects/south-east/manston-airport/ use the tabs to view the information.

The Q and As go roughly like this.

Have RiverOak applied for a DCO with respect to Manston? The answer here is No they can’t do this until they have put together plans for exactly what they want to do and held a public consultation about them.

Is there anything you or me, as interested members of the public can or should do, either in terms of supporting, objecting or just taking some sort of informed part in RiverOak’s plans and the DCO process? Or to put it another way, can us local do anything much to shape the nature of any airport we do eventually get, both in terms of its benefits and in terms its disadvantages? To be honest in terms going down the road of either saving the airport or stopping any airport being built, I don’t think there is anything much useful that can be said within the strict confines of responding to the DCO. The answer here is Yes, what we can and should do according to the DFT is engaging with RiverOak in the pre consultation stage. What the DFT say is. “We will not accept an application unless we are satisfied that the Applicant has undertaken pre-application consultation and has had regard to responses that they have received. It is strongly advised that you write to the Applicant for your representation to be considered while they are still forming the scheme, since this is the most effective way to influence the form of the proposed scheme and highlight the potential impacts that should be assessed. This front-loaded emphasis of consultation is designed to ensure a more transparent and efficient examination process.”

Can they deliver it? I think the answer here is very difficult to arrive at because it is very difficult to connect them with any similar business activity. In fact it is very difficult to connect RiverOak with any recent commercial activity of any sort, the last and only mention of commercial activity on their own website is http://www.riveroakic.com/pdfs/MKROIFirstInvestmentPR.pdf and suggests a relatively small investment in 2013.

Do the have the money? Once again the answer has to be no, their own website says that they put together schemes for clients to invest in and not that they already have substantial funds to invest. To an extent of course this apples to pretty much all businesses embarking on a large project but also the amount a business can raise for a project is very much related to the business’s related existing business. This is a bit of a no brainer really inasmuch as if I went to the bank asking for a loan to open a bookshop in Canterbury I would be much more likely to get a positive response that if I went to the bank asking for a loan to do something I hadn’t already got a business doing. I think this makes information about their aviation business activities elsewhere vital.

What are the snags? Mainly environmental, being on top of the aquifer, noise pollution and most of all I would think particulate air pollution.

Anyway some new documents on the DFT website at http://infrastructure.planninginspectorate.gov.uk/projects/south-east/manston-airport/?ipcsection=advice many of them say contact RiverOk at this stage, however I have tried this and RiverOak don’t reply.

Finally as rank outsider there is TDC trying to get another company to finance a cpo.

Sunday Ramble, Manston, Pleasurama, Salinger, Dreamland.

I guess those of you who follow our blog of pictures of the books going on to the shelves of our bookshop in Ramsgate http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/ realise that I have been very busy recently.

I think the main reason here is that we seem to have the last secondhand bookshop in the area dealing with large book clearances, the last one being about 500 mostly maritime books. Quite a lot of these were not in the best of condition and so went on the shelves at very low prices.

I have been having a lazy Sunday afternoon reading Salinger’s short stories, my 1953 edition seems to have had many incarnations, starting in The Free Library of Philadelphia. The stories mostly relate to the youf of today around the time my parents were the youf of today, strange stuff.

The Ramsgate Pleasurama saga continues with what looks like close on another £1m of cliff patching repairs, I would guess that efforts to make this 100 metres cliff suitable for people to live under must have mopped up more money than any other 100 metres of cliff in the area.

The council still haven’t answered my two main questions about this one; will the council be able to economical maintain the cliff from the narrow gap between the development and the cliff for the life of the development? And will the council go into taking the liability for the 150 year old sea defence that holds the development’s foundation in place without a flood risk assessment?

At the moment the cliff repairs are supposed to be finished by 16 October, I would guess there will either have to be some drastic corner cutting or they won’t be finished on time.

I guess with the demise of the local blogs the most lively local forum with about 3,500 members has to be the FaceBook group We Love Ramsgate https://www.facebook.com/groups/516220578418850/ recent highlights being.

This from ex Ramsgate Mayor David Green.

“On Wednesday evening, I attended the Ramsgate Town Council meeting of its Town Improvement committee. I was the only member of the public there. 6 of our Town Councillors didn't turn up including the Chair of the committee. He preferred an entirely inappropriate appearance at TDC's Governance and Audit Committee. I attended because after 4 months in office, I thought our new Councillors would be brimming with new ideas for the improvement of Ramsgate, and I wanted to hear them. I also wanted to hear whether they would be progressing any of the projects that were being progressed by the previous council such as refurbishment of the dolphin lights, the creation of a town square in pier yard, or the creation of a beach club on the marina car park. I have to say, I was profoundly disappointed. There were precisely no new ideas, no mention of the previous projects and important reports from the Ramsgate Town Team and the Town Promoter (whose role is to be discontinued) were treated with disdain, bordering on rudeness. The majority of those present obviously couldn't get the meeting finished quickly enough and get home to their cocoa.”

The first believable Manston cpo poll, I say believable inasmuch as it is a facebook poll which shows who actually voted which way and it isn’t on a pro or anti airport site.

The results are about at third for the TDC RiverOak cpo and about two thirds for letting Discovery Park get on with developing the site.

Although I was for reopening the airport I have grave reservations about an airfreight hub we can’t fly from instead, anyway I voted for Discovery Park and added my reasons to the page, here is what I said there.

“Just voted for the Discovery Park option and think I should explain why.

The choice here isn’t between an airport and a mixed use light industrial and residential development but between RiverOak who as far as I can see have no verifiable record of creating any jobs and Discovery Park who already run the development that is the largest local employer.

As a local businessperson I am only too aware that a very large proportion of my customers, who have an income sufficient that it means they can afford to buy more than essentials, work at Sandwich Discovery Park.

I have looked long and hard to find any references to RiverOak doing anything more than operating as a residential real estate hedge fund company. By this I mean investing clients funds into housing to produce a return on the rents.

I can find no verifiable link between RiverOak and commercial property investment, in fact they don’t even own the freehold of their own office.

I can’t see how any credible company could go through years of trading without leaving a media and internet trail showing what they have achieved, this may of course be because my it skills are not up to the job.

So if you want me to change my mind and believe that RiverOak would be a viable company to run the largest commercial site in Thanet, you only have to send me the links to the media coverage of their other commercial ventures.”

No one put up anything to change my mind.

Of course the main issue here, raised by TDC, the leader of UKIP, et al, is not do the council proceed with a cpo, but are RiverOak a suitable indemnity partner that the council could proceed with a cpo in a way that the council’s risk was minimal.

As I said in my comment there is very little on the internet about RiverOak’s past but I guess the most comprehensive is their own news archive, links down the right hand side of this page http://www.riveroakic.com/news/11/index.html

Much has also been said about how much money the council would have to find in terms of compensation where the cpo to succeed.

I think it is pretty clear that they would have to pay the present site owners enough to buy and relocate to another 700 acre brownfield site in the southeast, so £300m give or take.

The compensation to those affected by the cpo is less clear, but I would expect the noise and air pollution caused by a major cargo hub to have a significant effect on local property values and life expectancy.

Onto Dreamland and it looks like TDC are going to have to cough up an extra £2m to cover expense overruns.

With KCC spending so much on subsidising Turner Contemporary and TDC so much on Dreamland, perhaps TDC ought to consider lowering the Dreamland prices to the point where Dreamland is really busy.

An update on the Manston cpo.

When trying to tell where the council are going with their plans to try and buy the closed Manston Airport site to turn it into an air cargo hub and aircraft scrapping facility, there are no straight answers and for people like me who are Thanet council tax and business rates payers, it is a case of trying to read the signals that come from the main protagonists.

At the moment the situation is that the airport site has been bought by the people who own the largest local employer, Discovery Park at Sandwich http://www.discovery-park.co.uk they have plans to turn the site into a mixed light industrial and housing complex.

So what the council are proposing is to use money provided by an American property hedge fund management company RiverOak http://www.riveroakic.com/ to fund a compulsory purchase of the Manston Airport site to turn it into an air cargo hub and aircraft scrapping facility.

Both RiverOak and Discovery Park have websites detailing their plans http://www.riveroakinvestments.co.uk/ and http://www.stonehillpark.co.uk/ I supose the fundamental difference is that Discovery Park own the site and RiverOak don’t.

So I suppose the first question is; why would Thanet Council want to take the site away from a major local employer with plans to create local jobs and housing on the site?

I guess this happened when the airport closed and a lot of local people tried to get the council to do something to get it reopened, I would say that the local consensus is still for a regional airport. A problem here though with the various groups supporting the airport reopening is that they are now supporting an air cargo hub and aircraft scrapping facility and not a passenger airport.

Anyway the political part of government in this area, by this I mean the people we vote for as opposed to the local government employees, seem to right behind the council engaging in a compulsory purchase.

I guess in terms of risk though our local politicians would do very little in terms of carrying the can if the cpo goes wrong and for the most part they seem to be saying they intend to save the airport without making it clear that this saved airport won't be a passenger airport.

RiverOak the American hedge fund broker have set up a Delaware LLC to manage the cpo and channel investors funds into the project, which means investors can hide their identifies, click on the link http://beginnersinvest.about.com/od/holdingmethods/a/Delaware-LLCs-for-Beginners.htm or just google Delaware LLC, to see where I am coming from here.

I guess as RiverOak are a fund management company, perhaps the biggest question of them all is; whose funds are they going to use to finance a hugely expensive cpo?

It seems the answer to this one is; that they won’t even tell Thanet Council.

Here is the council’s latest statement:

Thanet District Council is currently reviewing its position around whether Riveroak is a suitable indemnity partner for a compulsory purchase order on the Manston Airport site.

This followed a Cabinet decision in July which committed to re-opening discussions with the American firm.

Following a final request for financial evidence promised by Riveroak, Thanet District Council’s solicitors have now reviewed the information submitted by the company on Friday 14 August.

An important part of this process is for the council to seek financial assurances from Riveroak given the significant financial risk of pursuing a CPO by a publicly-funded authority.

Two redacted letters were provided which do not identify the names or addresses of the investors who Riveroak suggest could provide the financial security required.

This approach to providing information in a redacted format is for a local authority, highly unusual and prevents it from being able to gather any financial assurance from it.

As a consequence the council has now asked for confirmation of the bond agreement as detailed in the draft indemnity agreement submitted by Riveroak.

Here is the link to the statement on the council’s website http://thanet.gov.uk/the-thanet-magazine/news-articles/2015/august-2015/manston-position-statement/  

                

I would say that if after a year of our local politicians pursuing a cpo by Thanet Council with a major inventor financing the cpo, the council don’t know the identity of the investor, then it is time to ask the council just how much money they have spent so far on pursuing this cpo.     

Manston, Discovery Park, Stone Hill Park, consultation at The Pegwell Bay Hotel Today & Margate Football Club tomorrow.

I arrived early as I though I could have difficulty parking because of all the Save Manston Airport protesters, this doesn’t seem to be an issue as there were only four protesters there when I when I left at 3.30 two of them had drifted off to look at the consultation.

Here is the link to the website http://www.stonehillpark.co.uk/ the consultation goes on until 7.30 this evening, and as Discovery Park are one of our main local employers you may wish to go.

The venue overlooking the sea is a present and cool place to be today, it has a large sundeck overlooking Pegwell Bay,

here is the sketch of Pegwell Bay Hotel that I did from the sundeck while I was waiting for the consultation to start.

and here a photo inside, the consultation.

 I will endeavour to say something about it next but I thought I had better put this post up for anyone who needed reminding that it is on now.

 OK I had a chat to the people there, the plans more ideas really are at the flexible stage, so if we get this, input from locals with local knowledge could make for a more positive outcome.

Obviously as a local businessman many of whose better spending customers work at Discovery Park I have a vested interest in this particular outcome, so this is something you need to take into account when reading what I have to say about it.   

Discovery Parks have a good truck record for creating employment, for attracting grant funding that would otherwise be spent in some other part of: Europe, the UK or Kent.

I did try to get out of them what they thought about the people who want to build an airfreight hub on the site, this is very difficult as everywhere else in the world people are trying to stop airports being built or expanded near where they live, if only because the associated pollution reduces their life expectancy, as for people who want to live near an airfreight hub they can't fly from, well it’s very difficult for other people to understand.

I did go and talk to the two remaining Save Manston Airport supporters outside, who were charming and courteous but didn’t seem to have a case that I could understand, but I am working on this one, so it may get through to me eventually.  

I had a long chat with Ray Mallon, mainly because he is an interesting character, I asked him, obviously, why he had got involved and his answer was because of his long term friendship with Trevor Cartner and Chris Musgrave who run Discovery Park.

I had a chat with the overall planner who is conversant with the site’s environment constraints and I guess I had some useful input as I had previously had a long chat with the airport’s site engineer about these issues. 

Thanet District Council Cabinet Agenda Published for Thursday, 18th June but no mention of Manston.

I guess a lot of people have been waiting for this agenda regardless of where they stand on the Manston issue and I guess and for the council to publish the agenda for the meeting with no mention of the issue, is strange to put it mildly.

Here it is http://democracy.thanet.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=151&MId=4046 see what you make of it, perhaps they intend to add more to it later, if so it does beg the question. Why not wait until the whole agenda is ready before publishing?

My own stance on Manston, recoded here over the years, is that while I was supportive of saving a regional passenger airport with a strong historic aircraft centre based around the two museums there, I do not support building an airfreight hub that we can’t fly from at Manston.

During the last few weeks there have been various attempts by those supporting TDC mounting a cpo to build an airfreight hub to discredit major local employers.

One example here is Sir Roger Gale MP for Thanet North saying on the BBC that one of the largest employers in Thanet South may be in financial difficulties, see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-33025447 another this one from Powermain https://www.facebook.com/powermain.co.uk/posts/759113690869067

Now obviously if people have a financial stake in the company that wants to open the airfreight hub or they are locals with experience working in aviation who hope they would gain employment at an airfreight hub, their enthusiasm for this is understandable, but once this enthusiasm crosses the boundary where it seeks to damage major local employers it becomes untenable.

update 4.55 10.6.2015

I phoned the council this morning and asked if the cpo was going on the agenda for the cabinet meeting a week tomorrow, they said it wasn’t and that the full agenda had been published.  

I tried some more searching questions, which they wouldn’t answer but asked me to put in an email to them:

"Hi *****, could you kindly let me know what the situation is with the Manston cpo issue, i.e. as much as you can tell me about the issue given the constraints on releasing information about it?

Also a couple of direct questions which hopefully you can answer. 

1 When will the issue go to Cabinet?

2 Is there any reasonable chance of a way forward on this one, has the situation re an indemnity partner changes, if not could councillors move forward in any way without officers producing and acceptable indemnity partner?  "

I have had the following reply:

"Hi Michael

I have forwarded your query to the Chief Exec’s Office for a response. You should get a response directly from her office.

Thank You

Regards

****** ******"

I emailed the leader yesterday asking what is going on over the cpo and still haven't had a reply. 

I have now had a reply from Chris Wells, my email and his reply below.

On 9 Jun 2015, at 21:55, " michaelchild@aol.com" < michaelchild@aol.com> wrote: 

Hi Chris, any idea why the cpo hasn't appeared on the cabinet agenda? 

Best regards Michael 

Websites 

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

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/

http://www.thanetonline.com/

From: cllr-Chris Wells
To: michaelchild
Sent: Wed, 10 Jun 2015 17:51
Subject: Re: Manston

Please see statement on tdc website 

Sent from my iPhone

Gears of Change Classic Car Show at Discovery Park Sandwich Photos, sketch from Turner Contemporary Margate, minor ramble.

We managed to get the best out of not very inspiring bank holiday weather, part of the entrance fee was a ride through the town of Sandwich on a classic bus, so a reasonably good day.

Lots of photos, mainly because I don’t have time to go through deleting the bad ones, they should all expand if clicked on.   

Select all lazy I know

 Here is the  sketch from Turner Contemporary Margate