Preston Steam Rally, the main local event this weekend.

This is one of the largest local events, just outside Thanet on the road to Wingham and is on tomorrow and Sunday.

Hare are the links to the pictures of last years event:

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/preston2010/

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/preston2010/id3.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/preston2010/id4.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/preston2010/id5.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/preston2010/id7.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/preston2010/id8.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/preston2010/id9.htm

here is their website:

http://www.prestonrally.co.uk/ you may note this site doesn’t work properly in Internet Explorer.

If you have looked at some of the pictures then I don’t suppose there is much I can do to explain the event further, certainly if you were thinking of camping this weekend it’s well worth considering doing so there and if you want a day out it’s a good one.

Preston Steam Services has a museum run by the same charitable trust that wants to run Ramsgate Maritime Museum http://www.thesteammuseum.org/

When it comes to the Maritime Museum that closed two years ago, it is very hard to see how the blame for its continued closure doesn’t mostly belong to Thanet District Council.

My understanding is that for several years now the steam trust, which is a charitable trust, wants to run the museum for the benefit of local people, has been negotiating with the council.

I think the stumbling point is that the building is one of Thanet District Councils iconic Ramsgate assets, others are or were, Albion House, The Royal Victoria Pavilion, Westcliff Hall, The Pleasurama Site, Nero’s, The Eagle Café and The marina Swimming Pool.

This is particularly ironic while the council is engaged in making a compulsory purchase of the Dreamland site in Margate, while these council owned assets in Ramsgate suffer their various fates at the hands of the council.

What is certain is that for the steam trust to run the museum they need grant funding and to obtain this they need security of tenure in terms of a reasonable lease from the council.

More irony here as at the same time as the council pulled out of the lease they had promised the trust on the grounds that long leases had to be seen as asset disposals and would therefore have to go through a long and probably expensive asset disposal process, they handed out a 199 year lease to the Pleasurama development developer without going to asset disposal.

Since then my understanding is that the trust said they would accept a shorter lease and this lease has been subject to a further couple of years prevarication by the council, now I think it likely that the trust may have given up the idea. Mostly on the grounds that the council are just to difficult to work with.

Whatever the ins and outs the museum remains closed and anyone seeing the obvious resources that the steam trust has to offer would be forgiven for wondering why the council are not welcoming them with open arms.

I would say that the main thing now in Ramsgate’s favour is that we really haven’t got much else in the way of council owned assets to lose, what remains at best is empty and at worse derelict, demolished or abandoned.

Update I have just heard from the council with an update on the situation that sounds encouraging:

“I am pleased to advise that latest iteration of the proposed lease  setting out 

the Council's preferred position as prospective Landlord, is  now with the Steam 

Museum Trust for consideration.

I hope that if there are still some issues to be resolved between the Council 

and the Trust, none of them will be too difficult to overcome.”

I will add to this one as I get time

Ramsgate Maritime Museum, full steam ahead?

I was most encouraged to see in yesterday’s Isle of Thanet Gazette an article that quoted a Thanet District Council spokesperson as saying, that the council are prepared to offer The Preston Steam Trust a 25 year lease on Ramsgate Clock House.

The article hasn’t yet appeared on the Gazette’s website so I am unable to link to it.

This is the building within the harbour area that has housed the maritime museum since it first opened, and because of its proximity to Smeaton’s Dry Dock, which I believe would also be likely to be leased to the museum under the same terms, is really the only practicable building to house the museum.

I have made some enquiries and gather that a 25 year lease would be sufficient to allow the museum to obtain the grant funding that it needs for the work it intends to do to the steam tug “Cervia”, the dry dock and museum.

The steam trust has the resources to offer a considerable amount of leisure activities for Ramsgate apart from the museum and the vessels I gather that it intends to hold a series of events in Ramsgate.

For those of you that are interested in what this could mean the following links take you to some pictures and videos of past events that they have held, adjacent to the other museum they run, at Preston near the village of Wingham in Kent.

http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2009/06/preston-steam-rally-videos.html

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/psr2008/

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/prestonsteamrally/index.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/prestonsteamrally2009/

For those of you interested in the last surviving ocean going steam tug “Cervia” click on the link for some pictures video below, these were taken before the recent restoration work, I promise to get down there and take some updated ones soon.

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/cervia/


For those of you who prefer something more professional, than the disorganised web publishing of a deranged shop assistant, here is the link to The Preston Steam Trust website http://www.thesteammuseum.org/

For those of you who haven’t ever visited Ramsgate Maritime Museum click on the link for some pictures of inside it.

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/blogpicts11/id4.htm

For those of you interested in the early history of Ramsgate harbour and Smeaton’s dry dock click on the link to read Smeaton’s report.

http://www.thanetonline.com/AnHistoricalreportonRamsgateHarbour/

This and that and will add to it as the day goes on.

A bit of a mixed bag today as it’s Friday in the bookshop and too busy to get on with anything that requires a lot of concentration, snippets between customers.

First quite a lot of events this weekend I have just lifted these from ECRs excellent What's On In Thanet listing on his sidebar

15-30 Thanet Multicultural Festival

20 http://www.ramsgatebandstand.co.uk/

20-24 Broadstairs Dickens Festival

20-21 http://www.sarahthorne-theatreclub.co.uk/

20-21 Margate's Big Event

Video from TDCTV



One local event that doesn’t get much publicity here is The Preston Rally which is on the 27th and 28th of June, click on the links below for pictures of their previous rallies and their website.

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/psr2008/

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/prestonsteamrally/more_steam_engines_for_sale.htm

http://www.thesteammuseum.org/rally.html

It’s such a pity there have been so many delays from TDC to get them going on the Maritime Museum, tug and dock as they were to have organised a series of events in Ramsgate this summer and as you can see they don’t mess about when they organise an event.

I noticed that Commercial Group Properties vanished from the Stock Exchange website at the beginning of this week, I don’t know if this is some sort IT glitch or if they have lost their aim registration.

I would have contacted them but they have one of the most bizarre websites I have ever come across, although you can view it in English and Chinese I couldn’t find any email address or contact form on it.

There has been a bit on the local blogs about a graveyard in Margate here from Your Thanet is a video about it for anyone interested.



Actually looking at this properly I don’t think it’s the same graveyard that other people have mentioned.

One rather unusual feature of the councils Big Event website, considering that it starts tomorrow, is that is says that the program of events will be published soon, as some of their press releases have appeared on the council website after the events the were supposed to announce I look on with interest.

Before the Cabinet decision on the Pleasurama development I emailed all of the cabinet members individually about it and have so far had courteous replies from Simon Moores, Sandy Ezekiel and Martin Wise.

The problem for me is that no one involved, developer, contractor or council, has any experience of building between the foreshore and a cliff face apart from the EAs technical expert.

She recommended various basic safety measures that the new plans are not compliant with, what none of them could tell me was why the cabinet are happy to go ahead with this potentially dangerous development.

Click on the link to read her letter http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/ea/id2.htm

Thanet District Council cabinet meet and delays for Ramsgate

As you can see my last post was pretty much a party political broadcast from the local Labour party, but at the moment it is the only account of the meeting on the internet so will have to suffice.

The two big Ramsgate issues remain unresolved, Pleasurama is to go to full council, with cabinet support for going ahead with it, I suppose no one wants to admit that the whole thing has been a disaster from the beginning.

The cabinet recommending going ahead with development that contravenes Environment Agency safety recommendations with no performance bond sounds about right.

The Maritime Museum remains unresolved which suggests more delays, some sort of decisive action wouldn’t go amiss so that Ramsgate can get on with being a leisure town.

My understanding is that Preston Steam Museum were to open during the first week of July, but had made it abundantly clear that they would only go ahead if the agreement had been finalised, this was supposed to have happened at last nights cabinet meeting.

There seems to have been some sort of error and no one had realised that “the asset disposal working party overview and scrutiny panel” have the power to veto the whole thing, so there is very little likelihood of the museum opening until well into august, which of course they are unlikely to do as it will be at the end of the season.

It doesn’t look like there will be much chance of the Maritime Museum opening or the Pleasurama site being cleared up, this is not so funny for people like me who are trying to trade in the town.

Back to why I published the Labour account of the meeting, before I go on I would be happy to publish an account from any of the Conservative group to balance things up if anyone wants to send me one and of course when they appear I will put the draught minutes up on http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/

For me what this is about is TDCIT here and now in the 21st century it should be possible for the officer that wrote the minutes to publish them straight to the web on a page with proper feeds so we would all know what is going on. It should also be possible for the video that they are already making to be uploaded to Youtube or Kent TV.

I find it quite curious that TDC uses Youtube rather than Kent TV which is paid for out of our council tax, perhaps they no something we don’t.

It’s decision day for another thing on the eastern undercliff today the ongoing Marina Restaurant restoration project today one way or another the council have made a bit of a mess of the eastern undercliff.

Anyone involved in the planning decision may wish to click here and ponder the rules that have already been broken over this one.

At one time or another they have owned and had full control of all of this area and have managed to trash it. The Marina Swimming pool, various different stories of the mismanagement that caused it to close. The removal of the car parking facing the sea and the cliff to fit in with a developers plan that never happened. The demolition of Nero’s which was a Victorian theatre and one of the earliest cinemas all part of the charming Granville Marina. The Pleasurama saga that so far has removed the main leisure car park to make way for a road layout built without the flood risk assessment strongly recommended by the EA. The Granville Marina Restaurant saga again today.

Casino complex in Ramsgate, Pleasurama, Maritime Museum, Sunday Ramble

Happy Easter to one and all.

I was interested to see an article in The Times about property in Broadstairs http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/article6060988.ece the article seems to have been derived from local estate agents and says that Ramsgate has a new casino complex under construction.

I wonder is it possible that there is something the local estate agents aren’t telling us, news is a funny thing however I often get the feeling that quite a lot of it is made up, and some things like whatever happened on the St Peters Margate road yesterday just don’t seem to appear.

From a local history point of view where a great deal of information is derived from newspaper archives this can present some problems, I can imagine a Ramsgate historian trying to answer questions about this nonexistent casino in 100 years time.

I believe negotiations are still ongoing in getting Preston Steam Museum http://www.thesteammuseum.org/ to take over Ramsgate maritime museum the problem here being the time that it’s taking, the councils slow grinding bureaucratic machine isn’t suitable for getting anything done in a timely manner.

They have been at it now for 6 months and now it’s Easter the museum is closed and the Cervia still sitting on her moorings.

It isn’t going to help much if it takes so long to get an agreement that we don’t get any program of events this summer or the Cervia sinks on her moorings.

I have been pressing the council fairly hard this week over the Pleasurama development firstly to get the site cleared for the summer and to ensure that we don’t go down another 5 years of unworkable plans and inaction.

With the money laundering regulations that have come in since the plans were first approved 5 years ago it seems fairly uncertain that the council can legally deal with a developer where the funds are derived via a British Virgin Islands company, the council are now looking into this and promise a reply about it next week.

I also believe that both the council and developer are coming round to the idea that the public transport access is unworkable, I think a problem here is that the whole western undercliff area from the pavilion to the car park where the marina pool used to be really needs to be restored and developed in an integrated way.

The mock up pictures of the development on the architects website still show the original gull winged building that relates to the first set of plans I can't link to the page on their website as it’s some strange flash production click on the link http://www.prc-group.com/index.php?id=0 then portfolio, sector, mixed use and then click on the picture of the development.

Mind you it’s still on the Robert Leonard group website http://www.robert-leonard.com/ they were the first contractor to pull out several years ago, there is a certain unreality about the developments presence on the web as though various companies have come along to make some money out of it, realised how bad the project is and departed.

I notice nothing appears on Knight Developments website http://www.knightdevelopmentsltd.co.uk/INDEX.asp they were the second contractor that were to have built it, they decamped after their sister company Knight Roadworks http://www.jlknightroadworks.co.uk/index.html built the road layout without the flood risk assessment strongly recommended by the environment agency.

Mind you this could all be a bit embarrassing for the parent company Knight Environmental http://www.knightenvironmental.co.uk/index.htm I quote from their website.

“Knight Environmental Limited has recognised the need for this with many of our customers and have developed the in-house expertise for undertaking flood risk assessments using Environment Agency accepted methodology outlined in the 'flood estimation handbook' (FEH). Knight Environmental Limited is able to assist our customers at the earliest stages of the planning process thus minimising delays, the number of specialist sub-contractors and streamlining the environmental inputs for our customers.”

Well know it’s with Cardy Construction http://www.cardyconstruction.co.uk/ nothing on their website either, one would have thought one would have thought a project of this size would have warranted a mention.