Friday the thirteenth, an auspicious day for Thanet District Council? Another councillor resigns the whip and other rambles about our little isle.

 The situation at the moment seems to be that we have now got 5 independent councillors as Ian Driver has resigned from the Thanet Labour group, I have to admit that this quite surprised me.

My reasoning being, having done this, how would a socialist in Thanet ever get elected as a councillor again without the support of the local Labour group? Perhaps I am missing something here but to me it seems that in Thanet there isn’t much political ground left of Labour or right of Conservative. I don’t think that standing as an independent candidate in the ground outside has much mileage.

 Do I think that these councillors that resign the whip should stand for re-election? Well frankly no I don’t think that party politics of the conventional sort is appropriate at district council level and I always vote for the individual and not the party.

At the moment I suppose what I want my councillors to be doing regardless of their political party is to try and get the best for the local area and to try to achieve something in the direction of what local people want in terms of the direction the council is moving in.

 Most of the local people I speak to are against the live animal exports and see to see Ian Driver more as a force in this area than a force for the political extreme left.

I guess this week most of us want to see our councillors supporting the council’s bid to get Dreamland and turn it into a visitor attraction and I am told that the lack of numbers at the public enquiry is being seen used by legal team who want to develop the site as mostly housing, as an indicator of lack of interest in the heritage leisure park.

 Obviously an important factor here is does this defection mean that the local Conservative group have a realistic chance of winning a confidence vote in the council and regaining Conservative control.

A busy Friday in the bookshop for me today, so I haven’t managed to get out and get a Gazette, obviously the leaked information about EKO Eurokent is of great interest to me, so here is the link to that story http://www.thisiskent.co.uk/Councils-property-firm-lost-pound-300-000/story-14412242-detail/story.html

 I guess that some of you are wondering what EKO is all about, clicking on this link may help a bit http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/search/label/Eurokent as it takes you to the posts I put up when trying to find out from a somewhat reluctant council.

Like the Dreamland site this is about putting more housing where perhaps housing isn’t appropriate, only in this case the property developer seems to be our local councils and the land seems to be prime agricultural land and our children’s playing fields.    

I spent a fair bit of yesterday evening looking at the equality issues that John Worrow is now to champion, see http://www.stonewall.org.uk/what_we_do/2583.asp and am coming to the conclusion that there are still some very real issues here.

I suppose the problem for me is that being a white heterosexual male I don’t often come up against anything remotely like discrimination, I was one disabled but that was a long time ago when discrimination hadn’t really entered into the world of awareness.

Being in wheelchair meant being a cripple, if the disabled word had come along it was a new one, homosexuality was still theoretically illegal and the word gay meant carefree and happy.   

In the world of secondhand bookselling where almost everyone involved is fairly eccentric, I don’t think there is very much discrimination, certainly books have been a major factor in changing attitudes towards discrimination.

Although there are areas where there are surprising gaps, for instance you may wish to try and name three famous American feminist novelists, this isn’t as easy as you first would suppose. 

So now we come to what really bugs me about Ian Driver and that is total lack of any attempt to communicate why he has resigned the Labour whip to us lot the Thanet voters.

He has a blog http://redthanet.blogspot.com/ a twitter account https://twitter.com/#!/ianddriver so why not tell us, the local people what he is up to and why?


Mike Harrison is saying that this is a flowerpot issue see http://newingtonblogspot.blogspot.com/2012/01/expected-resignation-happens-again.html there are other indicators online see http://www.whatnextjournal.co.uk/Pages/back/Wnext6/Slp.html

I think and of course we won’t really know until he tells us that What Ian is against is the floral display budget about £20,000 and the events budget about £165,000, it think what he is saying is that there should be no council funded events and no council funded flowerpots next year, as this costs the council £185,000. This has to be put into the perspective of the council’s overall budget of about £22,500,000 which means that roughly for every thousand pounds the council spend about £1 is spent on events and flowers.

We now of course come to what happens at next Thursdays council meeting to approve the budget, see http://tdc-mg-dmz.thanet.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=141&MId=2612&Ver=4

Where for instance do the Conservatives stand, do they vote against the budget, because it is a Labour one on principle? I suppose the answer to that would be yes.

The rest of the independents, where do they stand, I would guess that they had considerable influence in the formation of this budget.

There is also of course where Ian stands, obtaining from the vote because he doesn’t want the flower pots is one thing, but obtaining on a vote of confidence, if this then means he lets the Conservatives get in could be something to live down for him.

So now we come to the really tricky bit and that is what are the solutions open to trying to deal with the serious problems that Thanet has.

Here in Ramsgate many of the problems that we have relate to council owned properties, Pleasurama, casino, museum, Albion House, Westcliff Hall and so on, so I suppose many of us here are waiting to see if the Labour group stay in power for any length of time whether any of these problems will get solved.

There is a perception in the town that many of these problems were related to spite towards a town that has mostly Labour councillors and I guess the Conservative stance that the business with the community centre in Broadstairs was an act of spite by the new Labour administration towards a town where the majority of councillors are Conservative lends more weight to this perception.

It does look as though Ian may have quite a lot on his plate at the moment as I think there were some interesting ramifications at last nights live animal export protest at Port Ramsgate, I think this facebook thingy will open even if you are not a member of it http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stop-Live-Exports-From-The-Port-of-Ramsgate/205331499512961 let me know if it doesn’t and I will fiddle with it.

I will ramble on here as the day progresses

Eurokent Plans for housing estate and shopping centre at Westwood Cross published.

The planning reference is OL/TH/11/0910

The TDC planning website is one of the most bizarre websites I have ever come across in as much as the web addresses of the pages on it change after a few hours so you can’t publish links to them. If you want to look at any of the applications you need to go to the site and enter the application reference in the search box, this link takes you to the site http://www.ukplanning.com/thanet

Some of the pdf files are a bit on the large size so you may find them easier to deal with if you download them to your computer first.

Interestingly the results of the public consultations are published in the application -In council speak the consultation document in the planning application is called “Other-9215374”- (people’s actual responses are at the bottom in an appendix), summarised this seems to be: we asked people if they wanted it, they said no and now we intend to impose it on them.  

I will try to write something more about this if I get time to study the plans.    

Eeeeekkkoconsult Thanet District Council EKO, a strange tale of female emancipation and war a ramble

I know some of you have been following my dialogue about Eurokent with our new chief executive with interest, anyone who missed this and wants to know what it’s about should click on this link http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2011/07/eurokent-business-park-thanet-district.html and then this link http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2011/07/eurokent-consultation-update-and.html

Anyway the gist of this thing is that I suppose building a housing estate on agricultural land and a playing field, given to Ramsgate, that will ultimately house thousands of people seemed important to me. So much so that I asked the council about aspects of this through their customer feedback system.

This is an important issue to local people and I have tried to ask the right questions on behalf of the thousands of local people who read this blog, as most of you must know we have been denied access to the council’s press department, in fact I had thought that all of the local bloggers had. That was until the news about the councils position on animal exports was announced on Thanet Life two hours before the press release appeared on the council’s website, so I suppose it is different rules for cabinet member bloggers to the rest of us.

This is a ramble so I wont' bother to apologise for rambling again, sorry.

Anyway I was pleased when our new lady chief executive replied to us directly and thought this was appropriate to the scale of the matter.

Now something seems to have gone wrong and the response to my email that started:

“With the consultation having to be in by Saturday there is obviously no time to follow the instructions on the Eurokent website and make a foi request to TDC to find out what this issue is about in financial terms.”

Was:

From: ***@Thanet.gov.uk
To: MichaelChild@aol.com
Sent: 07/07/2011 16:34:08 GMT Daylight Time
Subj: Thanet District Council - Information Request Acknowledgement

Ref No:29224 / 1795271

Dear Mr Child

Thank you for your communication of 05/07/2011 requesting information about the ownership of Eurokent Business Park and Rose Farm Estates involvement in it.

Your request is being dealt with under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and will be answered within twenty working days.

If you have any queries about this request do not hesitate to contact me.  Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future communications.

Yours sincerely,

****
Information Request Assessor.

Anyway I banged off an email to Sue saying:

Fwd: Thanet District Council - Information Request Acknowledgement

From:
  MichaelChild

To:
  sue.mcgonigal sue.mcgonigal@thanet.gov.uk

Date:
Fri, 8 Jul 2011 11:54

Sue, I assume you did read what I sent:

“With the consultation having to be in by Saturday there is obviously no time to follow the instructions on the Eurokent website and make a foi request to TDC to find out what this issue is about in financial terms.” Etc.

Now I have several thousand readers who from my web stats have been taking a considerable interest in our correspondence about the Eurokent issue, I also clearly pointed out that if you have any off the record observations that you don’t want me to publish you only have to say so.

I don’t really know if the email below (above) is another ghastly communications error or is really what you want me to publish in response to the above, could you please let me know either way?

I have also contacted EKO who promised to email me details of the response to the previous consultation, well the consultation deadline is tomorrow and I still haven’t heard from them.

Perhaps you consider I have some ulterior motive here in trying to find out exactly who and what EKO comprises of, what their relationship is with the existing Eurokent Business Park, which seemed up until this consultation to have been reasonably successful given the current economic climate, I don’t really know.

What we have at the moment is a consultation about a project to build a large housing estate with the council as major stakeholder on the one hand, while on the other hand the councils press department are issuing press releases that seem to pretty much exclusively be saying. “We are making more tractors”.

Basic information like who the council is partnering with and what the results of the previous consultation were, would seem essential information for completing this consultation.

My experience with TDC foi requests is that information can take nearly a year to obtain, indeed I have one about the current situation with the Pleasurama development that seems to be taking an inordinately long time.

I should also point out that as the email I sent to you, which presumably instigated this foi request isn’t included in the response it seems very unclear which of the questions I asked you are to be answered in this way.        

Best regards Michael

As I said I also phoned up the people at East Kent Opportunities who promised to send me the answers to my questions before the consultation deadline today.

The net result of this was nothing turned up, so I have just filled in the consultation, I will try and make the questions a different colour to my answers eventually:

What do you think about the proposed Eurokent masterplan?

I have contacted EKO and asked for some basic information about this project that I considered I needed to fill out this consultation, I was promised this information by email prior to today the consultation deadline and I haven’t received it.

I also asked TDC and after some dialogue which essentially delayed the issue I received a notification this Thursday that my answers would be treated as an foi request and I could expect a response in about a month.

The main things I asked for were a summary of the previous consultation results and a more detailed breakdown of the ownership of EKO. I also asked if the Eurokent Business Park was wholly or partly owned by EKO and an update on exactly how much of a failure or success accomplished site has been. This request was made in the light of the recent TDC press release http://www.thanet.gov.uk/news/latest_press_releases/eurokent_business_park_success.aspx that said the business park had been a successful venture.

Obviously when the intention is to turn agricultural land into housing land the potential for financial gain is enormous and so I would like to properly understand the justification for this, some sort of reasonable evidence that the parts of the site already developed have been a failure, Marlowe Academy, Eurokent Business Park and so on, would be helpful.

Also in view of the huge profits involved I would like to understand who outside of the local councils stands to gain, a particular consideration here is Rose Farm Estates and if there is an aspect of councillors or council officers having administrative or personal share involvement in the business.

It is difficult to tell from the outside if this venture is a situation where the council are trying to recover the losses incurred by bad financial judgment, if the EKO always intended a residential development here, or what exactly has happened. There is also a sense that EKO appears to be distancing itself from use of this site that has been successful, loan of part of the site to extend Jacky Bakers, Eurokent Business Park etc.

The main information part of the EKO website doesn’t work http://www.eurokent.org/news.html and the information contact seems to have been removed from this page, this doesn’t help when trying to respond to this consultation.

There is also the concern that turning this site over to residential could lead either to residential use or expansion of the other EKO site at Manston, without this site and with the environmental problems with the Manston site it difficult to understand where business expansion it to occur in Thanet when the economic climate improves.

Aspects of the mock-up design on the EKO website are very concerning, for example see http://www.eurokent.org/pages/high%20street.html this shows a High Street design with no apparent shops, non conventional building materials used to produce what looks like dated and dense council housing of the type that is now causing social and economic problems.

The also seems to be no explanation how residential accommodation would sit around a road layout designed for large commercial vehicles, now used as a rat run to and from Westwood Cross.

Essentially aspects of this consultation are unclear to the extent that it is impossible for me to support a mixed development on this site.  

We are looking for feedback on a future name for the Eurokent development, which is more suitable to a mixed-use scheme. What do you think the new community should be called?

Thaneton

What sort of community facilities would you like to see as part of the masterplan proposals?

I suppose that depends on what sort of community is envisaged there, as this development would, if built it would connect Westwood Cross with Newington  community facilities would have to reflect the needs of both existing developments.

Oh yes back to the ramble, it is Saturday evening and this is a long ramble, so you may need a drink at this point.

We now come to Jacky Bakers as some of you may remember EKO had a bit of Jacky Bakers by swapping it for a bit that had already been taken away, or some such thing, this is the council’s explanation http://www.thanet.gov.uk/council__democracy/consultation/closed_consultations/jackey_bakers_sports_ground.aspx  and even this bit if your computer can manage a pdf http://www.thanet.gov.uk/PDF/eurokent.pdf

After WW1 what with one thing and another the vote was given to women, this was done quickly and without much fuss, as they had been running most of the essential services, I don’t suppose the men at the time had much option.

Here in Kent Ramsgate was the first place to have a female mayor, Janet, and it was this Janet who gave Jacky Baker’s farm to the town, this is what she had to say about it:

“ In providing the ground for the young people of the town a new lung had been added to the borough [Ramsgate] which would be appreciated not only by those alive now but by their children’s children.”

The pink bit of Jacky Bakers is the bit the council seem to want to build houses on, I hope it comes out shocking enough for you, its always difficult to tell with colours and computers.  

 

The picture if you click on it to enlarge it and then click on it again is a high resolution scan of my copy of the 1791 print of Ramsgate a smaller version of this forms the frontis of Richardson’s Fragment of History, available from good bookshops.

I recommend printing it out and sticking it on the wall for a bit.

 

Eurokent Consultation Update and an Apology From Me to the Chief Executive of TDC

First I should remind anyone who wants to take part in this consultation that they need to do so by this Saturday, here is the link to do so online http://www.eurokent.org/pages/feedback.html


The rest of this is a bit rambleish I will try to format it so it isn’t too boring.


The Eurokent website is a bit strange, in fact there seem to be two websites this one http://www.eurokent.org/EKO.html and this one http://www.eurokent.org/index.html you can get to the second one from the first one but not the other way around. The first one shows both of their business park sites and the second one only the Westwood one.


Next my apology to Sue McGonigal, this is a bit embarrassing to me as the dialogue between us that I published on Friday continued and I have just been reminded by the council’s Corporate Information & Communications Manager, Business Services, that Sue replied to me on Saturday and I didn’t add her clarification.


To read the correspondence so far click on this link http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2011/07/eurokent-business-park-thanet-district.html


OK this now gets slightly complicated to explain, the original complaint I made on the 26.6.11 didn’t get the normal confirmation of receipt from the council and then I made another complaint and got the normal confirmation of receipt, so I assumed the council’s email system had cone wrong again. As it happened I had CCd the original complaint to the council’s leader and chief executive at their TDC email addresses, so I emailed them to see if they had received it. 


So here is the rest of the dialogue, first the email from me to the leader and the chief exec.


From:   <MichaelChild@aol.com>
To: Customer Services   <Customer.Services@thanet.gov.uk>
Cc: cllr-Robert Bayford   <cllr-Robert.Bayford@thanet.gov.uk>
Cc: Sue McGonigal   <Sue.McGonigal@thanet.gov.uk>

Sent: 28/06/2011   15:50:37
Subject: Re: Official complaint ref C2

Sue Bob could  you  kindly confirm that you received the email below (complaint link above) as it's one of  three I sent to customer services recently, this one and  another one didn't turn up at all and a further one took  nearly 20 hours to  arrive.

I assume this is a problem you wish to know about and resolve, so any help with it I am happy to provide.   

Best regards    Michael

Then her reply


In a message dated 28/06/2011  17:43:34 GMT Daylight Time,  
Sue.McGonigal@thanet.gov.uk  writes:

Dear  Michael,
Yes we received the complaint, and I have written a response, which
Should 
be with you shortly  (I am currently out of the office and  so have
asked 
someone else  to process it through the complaints  system)
Regards,
Sue  

My reply to Sue  

>>> <MichaelChild@aol.com>  06/29/11 4:55 PM >>>

General note. I am way behind with  responses to emails as  have had
about 
forty complicated local  history questions this week, so sorry  about the

delay in replying  to you.  
Few crossed wires here I think Sue  
What I was  asking is had the council received the thing  as I have made 
four  feedbacks recently and what seems like an almost total  breakdown
of  
communication. 
The system seems to be partly busted, I send in a   complaint on a date
with 
a reference to customer services email. 
I  then get a response from a different council email  address,  saying
the 
complaint has arrived on a different day and giving it  an  entirely
different 
reference, they don’t tell me what the  complaint was about  even. 
So I send them four complaints. 
C1 the  sky is green, date 1.1.01 
C2 the grass is red, date 2.2.02 
C3 the sea  is purple, date 3.3.03 
C4 my tea is cold, date 4.4.04 
And get two  responses  
We have revived your complaint C7 date 7.7.07 
We have  revived your complaint C8 date  8.8.08

Best regards   Michael

Websites

Then her reply 
In a message dated 01/07/2011 09:33:29 GMT Daylight Time,  
Sue.McGonigal@thanet.gov.uk writes:

Dear  Michael,
I have copied this on to ++++++, who oversees the  complaints
process, and ask her to provide a reply to you.  

Regards,
Sue

Then I received Sue’s response to the complaint from the council’s Corporate Information & Communications Manager, Business Services. (link above)

And I replied to Sue

From: <MichaelChild@aol.com>
To: Sue McGonigal <Sue.McGonigal@thanet.gov.uk>

Sent: 01/07/2011 21:02:55
Subject: Re: Official complaint ref C2


Evening Sue sorry about the delay in replying, thanks, I  think part of the 
problem here is that the questions that relate to writing the  blog don’t 
fit very easily with having to use the complaints procedure to get  
information. 
I don’t want to be difficult about this one, I have just  sorted out last 
month’s web statistics which show I had more than 5,000  individual readers, 
so there is a sense in which I have some responsibility to  them. 
I have just done the post about Eurokent see 


http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2011/07/eurokent-business-park-thanet-district.html  
any 
corrections are welcome, both official and  off the record. 
As  you see there is a certain incongruity between the March press release 

http://www.thanet.gov.uk/news/latest_press_releases/eurokent_business_park_success.aspx)   
and your reply, which I would like to iron 
out.  
Best regards  Michael

I then got the following response from Sue 

From:
  Sue McGonigal 
To:
  MichaelChild


Dear Michael,
The Eurokent Business Park, referred to in the press release that you attached, 
is entirely separate from the developments being consulted on by EKO (which 
unfortunately relate to a parcel of land also known as Eurokent). The former was 
developed by TDC, in partnership with SEEDA - and the latter is being developed 
by EKO, which is the joint venture between TDC and KCC. 
Regards,
Sue.

Finally to bring you up to date my reply to Sue sent today.


Re: Official complaint ref C2


MichaelChildMore Details 


From:
  MichaelChild




To:
  Sue.McGonigal Sue.McGonigal@thanet.gov.uk


Hi Sue, once again please accept my apologies for the delay in replying.


With the consultation having to be in by Saturday there is obviously no time to follow the instructions on the Eurokent website and make a foi request to TDC to find out what this issue is about in financial terms.


I intend to a blog post about the issue later today, both highlighting the need to respond to the consultation by the end of this week and to try and explain what this is about.


I did go to the consultation information drop in at Ramsgate Market and I did ask the people there about the Eurokent Business Park and the council’s press release, their response was that the business park hadn’t been a success with few takers for the units.    


From the way they spoke I had assumed that it was all part of the same enterprise, can you confirm that the Eurokent Business Park is wholly owned by TDC and SEEDA with no part of it owned by EKO?


The EKO questionnaire I have in front of me, this only mentions Eurokent as being joint venture between KCC and TDC with no mention of Rose Farm Estates. Could you please explain what Rose Farm Estates involvement is and if councillors or council officers are involved either financially or administratively in Rose Farm Estates?


My take on this issue and please correct me if I am wrong, is that the council have gambled with a land investment and the building of an industrial and commercial infrastructure that has misfired and left the council with a large liability. Now it appears that the council is trying to resolve this problem by granting itself planning permission to turn farmland into residential and benefiting from the huge profits gained from so doing. Within this compromise I am concerned that other individuals involved will profit excessively from this.


I am also concerned about the relationship with Manston Business Park which is I believe another EKO venture that has gone wrong, my understanding is that the environmental considerations would make it unrealistic to proceed with a large commercial development there. This of course raises the concern that once Eurokent Business Park land at Westwood has been developed for housing, when the economic climate improves there will be nowhere left in Thanet for this type of regeneration.


It also raises the further question of does the council envisage a residential development at Manston too?


With respect to the consultation process and it not being a council consultation, my understanding is that the consultation was being carried out by Savills estate agents, once again please correct me if I am wrong, this raises the question of how the consultation was funded, did the council pay for part or all of the consultation?


Best regards Michael


Anyway I then got this reminder.


Dear Michael,
It may be helpful to your readers, and avoid some confusion, if you published the response Sue McGonigal supplied to your enquiry below on your blogsite. Her response was as follows:




Dear Michael,
The Eurokent Business Park, referred to in the press release that you attached, is entirely separate from the developments being consulted on by EKO (which unfortunately relate to a parcel of land also known as Eurokent). The former was developed by TDC, in partnership with SEEDA - and the latter is being developed by EKO, which is the joint venture between TDC and KCC. 
Regards,
Sue 
Kind regards,
+++
+++++
Corporate Information & Communications Manager
Business Services
Thanet District Council 


Sorry if all that was a bit boring, but I thought it would help those who are interested to see the thing in context. I think the underlying problem here is about trying to get information from the council for readers of this blog.


My difficulty is primarily that I have a lot of other things to do, apart from trying to formulate questions to the council in such a way that I get meaningful answers.


With something like this Eurokent business, I can’t just ask, what is this really all about?


To my mind something as important as over 500 new houses being built in Thanet on agricultural land that is partly owned by the council, ought to warrant a clear press release from the council telling us what is going on.


Listening to our MP stressing the importance of the UK being less dependant on food imports on BBC Southeast Today served to add to my concerns here.
I think that one of the problems that we have relates to wasted land empty properties another relates to taking into this area people with social problems from other parts of the country. What has happened in the social housing in my part of Thanet recently seems very like social engineering, producing ghettos of deprivation. I can see that these people have to be housed somewhere and I can also see that other people wouldn’t want to live in the noisy and often rowdy parts of the town centres. Living where one is cautious about going out of ones front door in the evenings is not pleasant. But to produce concentrations of deprived people without any sort of extra social support seems crazy to me.


Perhaps it would be best if the council built housing for the most deprived there and supported this with a special school, enhanced social services and policing.


Oddly enough what the council seems to be doing here is advocating building a housing estate with a centre rather like the one they have just demolished at Newington. The pictures on the East Kent Opportunities website, the High Street with no shops, accommodation adjacent to the dual carriageway rat run from Westwood Cross, the dated looking housing made of non traditional building materials, suggestive of an architect who wouldn’t want to live in what he has designed, none of this is encouraging.   
The picture is of coffins in St George’s crypt in Ramsgate. 

Eurokent Business Park Thanet District Council’s Chief Executive’s Response

This post mostly relates to the complaint I made to the council about the Eurokent Business Park consultation.

Here is the complaint I made to the council.

Subject:	Official complaint ref C2
Date:	21/06/2011 13:35:49 GMT Daylight Time
From:	MichaelChild@aol.com
Reply To: To: customer.services@thanet.gov.uk

This relates to the council failing to publicise a public consultation that they appear to be partly or wholly funding, the Consultation appears to be being held in the three main Thanet shopping centres this week.

Although this consultation seems to be being held under the Eurokent banner, it says on the Eurokent website: “Any Freedom of Information requests about the Eurokent and its budget should be made to Thanet District Council.”

The substance of my complaint is that this is in reality a public council funded consultation that the council for some reason is trying to conceal from the public.

Of course as the council now see my local news website, that several thousand local people read, as non accredited I no longer receive press releases, so I don’t really know if the council have published a press release about this but have been delayed in publishing it on their website, as has happened often before, or if the council are genuinely trying to conceal a public consultation about an important local issue.

Best regards Michael

29/06/2011 16:26:58 GMT Daylight Time From: ********@Thanet.gov.uk

Sent by *******, Corportae Information & Communications Manager on behalf of Sue McGonigal, Chief Executive.

Dear Mr Child

Customer Feedback Reference:29032

Thank you for your recent communication which was received on 24/06/2011.

In respect of your complaint that the council is, by reasons of its involvement with the East Kent Opportunities LLP, undertaking public consultation which is being concealed by the Council.

East Kent Opportunities LLP is a joint venture between TDC and KCC, set up to deliver development on Eurokent and Manston sites. It is a separate legal entity, and as such is undertaking consultation on its proposals to inform the drawing up of plans, that will, in due course, be submitted to TDC's Planning Committee for consideration. It is behaving in exactly the same way as any other building developer would in assessing public opinion of its proposals, which it is legally entitled to do.

The consultation is being widely advertised, and it is made clear on all of the documents that support it (the press statement, exhibition letter, advert and flyer) that this is a joint venture between TDC and KCC. I therefore must refute your suggestion that any attempt has been made to conceal this.

I hope that this resolves the matter to your satisfaction.

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

In order for us to respond as efficiently as possible, please ensure that you quote the above reference number and address your communication to ******* - Customer Feedback Co-ordinator, Executive Unit.

Yours sincerely

Sue McGonigal

Chief Executive

Thanet District Council

I have removed the officers names apart from the chief executives as I usually do, the reason for this is that the internet has a long memory.

My understanding of the Eurokent Business Park is probably inaccurate but I will do my best any corrections would be welcome.

I did go to the consultation in Ramsgate during my lunch break and I talked to a few people there, however they didn’t change my rather simplistic view of the situation, I was however very short of time.

In this country it is usually very difficult to build anything much on farmland and in this part of Kent farmland sells for much less than land you can build houses on, roughly farmland sells for about £10,000 £15,000 per acre.

Obviously if people were allowed to build houses on it the land would be worth a lot more.

What seems to have happened here is that TDC and KCC joined up with a private company, bought some farmland and got special permission to build industrial units on it, because this would provide employment for local people.

They then spent several million pounds building a large road through the middle of it to accommodate commercial vehicles and several more million pounds building a few industrial units at one end of the land. 

Then Thanet District Council issued a press release saying that most of the industrial units had been taken and the project was well on the road to success, see http://www.thanet.gov.uk/news/latest_press_releases/eurokent_business_park_success.aspx 

Then Eurokent issued a press release saying that the project had been a failure, very few of the units had been taken and that they wanted to build houses on the site.

I had rather stupidly got into my head that this was a council project and that the council should have issued a press release saying they were holding a public consultation about building houses on this farmland.

As you can see from the chief executive’s reply I was mistaken about this. 


I think the crux of the problem here is that the value of land for housing is so much greater than the value for land used for other purposes. 

On a very small scale I am up against this one as a small shopkeeper, obviously every town would like to have a bookshop, but frankly a bookshop on the edge of most town centres wouldn’t be able to pay the overheads related to the same space being used for housing.

The bookshop in Sandwich is in the processes of closing, something that rather proves this point.

The Thanet Labour group have put up a blog post about the Eurokent Business Park today, see http://thanetlab.blogspot.com/2011/07/east-kent-opportunities-and-eurokent.html

The Eurokent site is about 54 acres and they want to build 550 residential dwellings on the site. 

I will endeavour to add to this one as the evening progresses.

Eurokent Business Park public consultations this week

This is where and when the consultations are.

Broadstairs

Tuesday 21 June 2pm – 8pm

Holy Trinity Church Hall

Church Road, off Nelson Place,

CT10 1HQ Margate

Margate

Thursday 23 June 2pm – 8pm

Margate Media Centre

11-13 King Street,

CT9 1DA

Ramsgate

Friday 24 June 9am – 5pm

Street Market

Ramsgate Town Centre,

CT11 9AG 

Westwood Cross

Saturday 25 June 10am – 2pm

Main entrance

Westwood Cross Shopping Centre

Margate Road,

CT10 2BF

Where is Eurokent Business Park?

I have just had to explain this to two people who ought to know, so in words, if you come out of the car park at Westwood Cross Shopping centre and turn left, you find a load or roundabouts in fields that are not connected to roads and you have it.

There is a map on their website but unfortunately as it doesn’t name anywhere, it could be anywhere, so I have copied it above with the names of some well known places on it.

My understanding of this one is that Thanet District Council and Kent County Council invested in this land with the intention that it should be used for industry to provide employment in Thanet.

I think the idea now is to build houses on it.

Part of the masterplan for this site seems a bit strange to me, it seems to include a High Street without shops, see http://www.eurokent.org/pages/high%20street.html this may be loosely based on Margate although I am not really sure.

The same group seems to have something to do with the Manston Business park site see http://www.eurokent.org/manston%20park.html none of the links on their news page seem to work http://www.eurokent.org/news.html all in all this seems to be another site with lots of roundabouts mostly not leading to much.  

I have to admit to not knowing much about this one so I will try consult at Ramsgate market on Friday, these people seem to be very keen on massive road layouts that don’t seem to lead anywhere much.

Of course I can’t just ask the council’s press department what this is all about, although I suppose they may not know see http://www.eurokent.org/company.html It certainly seems a bit strange to spend all this money on roads that don’t seem to have anything much in the way of purpose, when so many of the busy Thanet roads are full of potholes.


I have just remembered that Bertie had things to say about Eurokent, click on the link to do a Google search of his blog for Eurokent http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=eurokent+site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fthanetstrife.blogspot.com%2F&hl=en&num=10&lr=&ft=i&cr=&safe=images&tbs=

I will add to this as I get time.