Margate Football Club Expansion Across Hartsdown Park, Last Chance to Take Part in the Public Consultation.

The responses to this have to have been received by Monday, so if you want to take part it’s now or never.

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Area shown on plan	Lease arrangement	MargateFootball Club (MFC) proposals
Area A	Existing lease	MFC are requesting to change the lease they have currently on the football ground from 10 years to 24 years.
Area B	New lease	MFC wish to lease a new area of Hartsdown Park to construct a new football pitch.  MFC are requesting a lease of 24 years on the site of the new pitch.
Area C	New lease	MFC wish to lease a new area of Tivoli Park to extend current parking provision. MFC are requesting a lease of 24 years on this site. (This additional parking provision would be for all users of the redevelopment as detailed below*).
Area D	New lease	MFC are requesting a new lease of 125 years on part of the football ground site currently leased to them.  This is for the construction of an 80 bedroom hotel*.
Area E (Two sites)	Existing lease	MFC are requesting a change to the lease on the existing five a side pitches and car park from 15 years to 24 years.

*Redevelopment - In 2005 MFC were granted planning permission for the erection of a mixed use development comprising a football stadium, 80 bed hotel, fitness club, children's play area, theme bar, conference and banqueting, hospitality boxes, admin offices, boardroom, one full size synthetic pitch, 10 five a side pitches and associated parking and landscaping. (Planning reference F/TH/04/1601).

Frankly Thanet District Council have done a good job both in promoting and presenting this consultation on the internet, so you shouldn’t have much trouble understanding it.

The only thing that some computers may have difficulty viewing is the map above, which is only on the council’s website as a flash player file, which is why I have published it above as an ordinary picture.

In these proposals the council act as both planning authority and landlord, so it is a case of they may approve a planning application but refuse to rent the club the land, so the club can’t actually do what the council has approved. 

Here is the link to the details of the consultation on the council’s website http://www.thanet.gov.uk/council__democracy/consultation/margate_fc_consultation.aspx

There isn’t an online consultation form and as any response has to be received by Monday, the only option open to most people will be to respond to the consultation by emailing the council at this email consultation@thanet.gov.uk   

I don’t live in Margate, so my own thoughts lack a detailed understanding of the issue, any corrections to them would be welcomed in the comments.

I don’t really have concerns about the 80 bed hotel, fitness club, children's play area, theme bar, conference and banqueting, hospitality boxes, admin offices and boardroom, particularly if it will help the club to remain viable.

I do however have problems with areas B and C as these fragment the parkland, as far as I can see from the plans the existing fencing on area E will continue on to area B so people will have to walk around the whole lot to cross the park. 

Margate Football Club new plans for 80 bed hotel 11 all weather pitches etc submitted

The plans are on the council’s planning website http://www.ukplanning.com/thanet planning ref F/TH/11/0428 the main plan is the one above, click on it to enlarge it.

There may have been a council press release about this, of course as an unaccredited news source I wouldn’t know.

 I will expand on this one if I get time.

Here comes the promised expansion, this is a Margate issue and doesn’t really effect me, also it is something that I don’t really know much about, this is how I read the situation and I would be glad if anyone would correct me in the comments.

My understanding is that some residents are concerned that putting the new artificial pitch where the club want to will fragment the park. This has all got tangled up with the club wanting to improve the facilities on the existing football ground site, something that I don’t think anyone was against.

Enter the council and everyone will have to abide by their rules, regardless of whether the result is beneficial to the club, the park users or Margate, stir in a few solicitors, get everyone’s backs up and you have the current situation.

I think Margate could easily end up with the park fragmented and the club facilities not improved.   

Hartsdown Park V Margate Football Club update

I have had a an answer from the council to my enquiry about the fenced off synthetic football pitch, shown in red, in the picture above, click on it to enlarge.

The football club have already built some fenced off five aside pitches, shown in green, in the park and obtained planning permission to add a full sized pitch to these.

Below is my written reply from the council.

“I've discussed your email with one of our senior planning officers, who
has provided the following information:


The artificial pitch was the subject of a separate planning application
and does not form part of the proposed scheme that you are being
consulted on. The amendment proposed relates to an earlier planning
application which granted permission for a new stadium and included a
hotel to the rear of one of the stands. The application proposes
amendments to that part of the original scheme and does not relate to
the proposed artificial pitch.


The club does not have a lease on the land where it proposes to build
the artificial pitch; should it apply for a lease from the Council, that
application would be the subject of public consultation to ensure that
the public have their say.


I hope this deals with your query satisfactorily.”

And here is the enquiry I sent the council.

Hi #### I am not clear about here is the situation about putting in the new and fenced off artificial pitch that seems to cut the park in half. I am asking about this as I think it was what got most peoples backs up,
I think this was the subject of yet another planning application, it’s a bit confusing on the council planning site with so many applications.


What I am getting at here is that if the council gives the impression that all is well and under control and open to public consultation and the football club cut the park in half with a fence, it won’t look to good for the council.

Margate Football Club V Hartsdown Park

Another document in the saga of football v Margate has appeared on the council’s website today, the planning part of Thanet District Council’s website is a very bizarre site, something that makes it impossible to link to things on it.

To view the document, go to http://www.ukplanning.com/thanet in the street name box click on the letter H, then click on Hartsdown Road and you will have all of the various planning documents that relate to this issue.

The batch of documents you want is 30 Mar 2011 F/TH/11/0224 and if you click on that link you will find one document called Other, this is a deed of variation changing the terms of an agreement between Thanet District Council and Hartsdown Development Company.

I should point out here that according Simon Mores in a rather bizarre thread on his blog, this document is to be deleted when their IT wizards work out how to do so, see http://birchington.blogspot.com/2011/03/wedding-bells.html

If you click on the plan above and then click on it again it should be big enough to follow, note the red bit in the middle of the park, my understanding is that the football club want to put an artificial pitch there and fence it off so that it cuts the park in half.

 They have already done this to the green bit.

Some people in Margate don’t like this idea and think that a public park is somewhere they should be able to walk across, others think that this will help the football club to survive.

And this map, the council’s planning site is like that, fuzzy images that you can’t decipher are quite common.

What the different looking plans and the deed of variation actually mean, in terms of the cutting the park up is a bit hard to tell, perhaps that they intend to cut it up in a different way.  

Thanet Life, Simon Moores Moves the Goalposts, is it a new Thanet Blog Wars?

I have been commenting on Thanet Life blog since sometime in 2006, sending Simon information and pictures that he has published there since that time too, so I was pretty much gob smacked when I got an email from him today saying that he was refusing to publish a comment I had made there. This hasn’t happened before and I am not certain if I will ever be able to comment there again, or for that matter if I will even bother to try.

This relates to a key Thanet issue that Simon raised on his blog about consultation over the disposal Thanet’s council owned leases.

Here is what the said:

“DrM. said...
Andrew, the most fundamental change is the treatment of long leases of 25 years or more as part of the overall asset disposal process.

The emphasis is now very much on consultation as part of such a process to avoid circumstances where the council is seen to be over-riding the wishes of local people without proper consideration of their arguments. 1.37 pm.”

Now an important point here is when this change came into effect, because of some of the disposal issues that have come up recently in Thanet. There have been many contentious asset issues in Thanet, part of Hartsdown Park in Margate being the most recent.

Here in Ramsgate there are several large council owned assets in prominent positions and some of them have been effected by this rule, Pleasurama where the council granted a 200 year lease to the developer without any consultation, The Maritime Museum where the council invoked this rule in a way that caused the closure of the museum, the slipways where the council used this rule to prevent a developer obtaining a long lease to build a bar complex there.

This is essentially an issue about money, as developers need leases longer than 25 years to finance developments on council owned land, hence the council are able to effectively halt the Margate Football Club development, that has planning permission, by not offering the club a long lease. This can also effect grant funding for charitable organisations wishing to run council assets. There is also the common sense side of this, it you are going to run a museum or theatre, you are in for the long hall and can’t invest heavily when the building’s security is a matter of the council’s whim, even if you could I doubt the charity commissioner would let you.

Anyway here is the link to Simon’s blog post http://birchington.blogspot.com/2011/02/lost-in-translation.html and here is my comment that he refused to publish.

Michael Child has left a new comment on your post "Lost in Translation":

Thank you Simon for the information, did you mean 26th July 2010 or 2009?

This is a quote from an email I received from the council in February 2010.

“The position regarding the Clock-Tower Building, occupied by the Steam Trust is as follows. The subject was discussed by the Council’s Overview and Scrutiny (Asset Management Working Party) in view of the length of lease sought by the Trust.”

With relation to your pervious replies the difficulty here is that you are different from the other bloggers, in as much as you are privy to council information that we are not.

In an ideal world the council’s information department would have a forum where major local issues could be discussed openly on the internet, it is the perception from outside the council, is that the councils information department exists exclusively to control the information that is available to the public.

I suppose in a way even that would be mostly unnecessary if the council published all of the information it held, apart from the information that would be refused in a foi request, as the council receives it, onto its website.

This could be achieved with considerable savings in costs to the council, by the council insisting that all information sent to the council, was supplied in preferred file formats, with the council levying a charge to commercial organisations either sending information on paper – so it has top be scanned in – or in a file format that has to manual converted for web publication.

In this instance I would say that you are as much a victim as the rest of us, in as much as the changes to such a fundamental rule about the way the council conducts its business, should have been publicised and the rules governing the way the council rents out its properties should be clearly and openly available on the council’s website.

The discussion I had with the leader of the council isn’t pertinent to this issue as it relates to a lease of less than 25 years and not the older lease that council didn’t issue due to the new rules. However it demonstrates very clearly what I am saying about information that you are privy to and we are not, put the shoe on the other foot for a moment and consider the situation if I was privy to your conversations with the leader of the council and said to you. “Simon. I understand the Leader of the Council called you to personally explain the issues surrounding such and such an issue, and hopefully that should have answered most if not all of your questions.” By way of an answer to a question you had asked me on a blog

Comment posted 11.18 am 2nd March 2011-03-02

Don’t misunderstand me here I delete comments that are potentially libellous, offensive or containing personal abuse, I suppose all bloggers do, but to delete a comment because it disagrees with your point of view, well that is another matter altogether.

When a local councillor who claims to support transparency and impartiality does this, then one can only form ones own conclusions.

Margate Football Club, Hartsdown Park, Hotel Plans.

As far as I can see Margate Football Club have announced they are going to start building a hotel next month that they haven’t got planning permission for, see http://www.margate-fc.com/content/show_news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1292538165&archive=&start_from=&ucat=24&

Simon Moores said on his blog http://birchington.blogspot.com/2011/01/game-of-two-halves.html that they have got permission to build an 80-bed hotel and this was granted in 2006, what worries me is that I can’t find the permission on the councils planning website. The reason that I am worried is that if there is one application that I can’t find there may be others.

I have been caught this way before, because the council sometimes changes the address it uses for the same building and if you don’t have the planning application reference you can only look things up by address.

Here in Ramsgate a building in Marina Esplanade, became one in Granville Marina, so there may be more than one address for Margate Football Ground and a whole host of plans that I don’t know exist.

I don’t know if this is down to TDC incompetence or a deliberate effort to deceive. The words of the Floyd song come to mind: Mother, should I trust the government? After the business with the leadership consultation my answer in the first instance is no.

What Simon seems to be saying is that football club have permission to build an 80 bed hotel and if they want to build a 68 bed hotel then they will have to get permission, what worries me is that as I can’t find the permission to build the 80 bed hotel they may have some other application, either filed or passed somewhere, that no one can object to or support because they can’t find it.

I should point out here that this is a Margate issue and not really something that I understand properly, I know that a lot of people support the club expanding and that a lot of people have concerns about the effects on the park.

My main concern here is that once again that council don’t really seem to have explained this issue, that is very important to a great many people, in fact the important documentation that the council have published on the internet seems to have the same prominence as applications for double glazing and garden sheds, don't help either.

As I couldn’t find the plans for any hotel I have used an old illustration of a model used to promote the redevelopment of Margate town centre, courtesy Margate Museum.

Update some comment about this issue is appearing on Thanet Life at http://birchington.blogspot.com/2011/02/light-at-end-of-tunnel.html you have to go fairly far down the comments to find it as the post started about Margate Caves.

Sunday Ramble

Hartsdown Park and Margate Football Club

A quick look at the other local blogs reveals one local news story from Simon Moores on Thanet Life see http://birchington.blogspot.com/2011/01/game-of-two-halves.html this is about the planning application for Hartsdown Park and Margate Football Club, not something I know much about.

I thought the application that was causing so much trouble was F/TH/10/0115 approved 15 Jun 2010 and that what really annoyed people was that the application signs only appeared on the gates of the football ground an not anywhere near the bit of the park effected.

I wouldn’t expect this planning permission to expire for several years.

The detail above shows just how drastically these plans cut up the park.

My understanding from a historical point of view, is that the original owners of this land were the Hatfeild family who were a family of very high repute and mixed in the highest of circles.

Word is that they were hosts to no fewer than three prime ministers there at Hartsdown House, including Winston Churchill who stayed there for two months.

I am not really sure that the council can just do what they like with this land, as I thought part of the agreement signed by the Hatfeild family when the land (800 acres) was left in perpetuity to the people of Margate, was a vast array of covenants which cannot be rescinded.

Word is that these even forbid even vehicles entering the park, let alone digging it up and putting a football pitch and hotel in the park.

I hope the council isn’t off on one of its missions to pour vast amounts of council tax into the pockets of lawyers, because they have failed to consult local people properly.

I am afraid the Margate isn’t really my remit so if anyone understands what this is all about please leave an explanatory comment.

There is also an article in this weeks gazette about the issue see http://www.thisiskent.co.uk/where/thanet/Redevelopment-park-gets-ahead/article-3069571-detail/article.html perhaps this is a tale of two planning permissions.

Don and the Big Breakfast

Don on Promote Thanet has some articles about healthy eating and alternative medicine including one on the 3lb fruit breakfast, I think this may be something to do with natural gas, see http://promotethanet.blogspot.com/2011/01/five-day-confusion.html

I took a few pictures of Ramsgate Harbour area when I went for my walk this morning, fraid I have been a bit lax on the picture taking front recently, they tend to get a bit boring as I don’t often get time in the morning to go to other parts of Thanet, here are the links to the pictures.

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/notebook8111/id3.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/notebook8111/id4.htm

I will ramble on if I get a chance

We went to Broadstairs this afternoon, I bought some books in the Broadstairs Bookshop (the small one in Albion Street near the bottom of The High Street) some for me some for my wife and some for children and some for stock, bit of a busman’s holiday I know but we also got a walk and an ice cream in Morelli's.

I tried to take some pictures, first the camera battery went flat so I tried taking still on my camcorder they come out rather small and fuzzy see http://www.thanetonline.com/laptop111/index.htm the few I took with my normal camera are at the bottom of the page. Then the camcorder decided it didn’t want to take any more so I tried my phone see http://www.thanetonline.com/laptop111/id3.htm even worse.

Then when I went to publish them the michaelsbookshop.com website was misbehaving so I published them to thanetonline.com not a good technology day, fortunately the ice cream was excellent.

During the course of discussions with one of the councillors about other matters last week, pointed out that the current administration is held in pretty low esteem at the moment. It’s always a bit hard to gauge these things and I suppose one would expect this at the end of a second term, a lot of what I hear is from customers in the shop and their feelings usually stem from some experience dealing with the council, rather than the overall state of Thanet. The main recent change of attitude I have been hearing is from local journalists and I think this is mostly due to the way the leadership consultation was managed. I think up until that the councillors were at least paying lip service to representing local people’s views, since it happened I have discussed it with several councillors and council officers frankly they seem lost for words. They try to swing the conversation round to the result i.e. the benefits of the different type of leadership but when pinned down to the way the decision was made, I am yet to hear a coherent explanation from any of them. What did surprise me though is that the councillor who I pointed out the low esteem the current administration is held in seemed to genuinely think that the opposite is in fact the case.