Saturday ramble

Customers are managing to get to my bookshop today despite the rain, frankly apart from shopping in the multiples, which probably means browsing books there and buying them online from a large company that avoids UK taxes the options are very limited.

The former Alexandra Hotel’s scaffolding has come off sorry about the picture mobile phone in the dark, if it ever stops raining I will go and take a better one.

I managed to get out and get an Isle of Thanet Gazette it seems Cllr Shirley Tomlinson is standing down from her role as cabinet member and offering to stand aside from the Conservative group while she faces her drinking and driving charge.

The Conservative group don’t seem to have found a new shadow cabinet member and appear to be carrying on one down for the time being.

The ongoing Royal Sands on the Pleasurama site is rumbling in the letters, I guess it is looking increasingly unlikely it will ever get over the cliff top. I always thought it would be the safety aspects, particularly building on a high risk flood zone that would do for it. Now it is looking much more likely to be the credentials of SFP the company behind it.

Here is Cllr Driver’s letter from the previous week’s Gazette:

Dear Editor

I read with interest (Thanet Gazette 2 November) Terence Painter’s claim that the developer of the former Pleasurama site at Ramsgate Royal Sands, SFP Ventures UK Ltd, “has a strong track record of (managing) similar developments in Portugal”. I understand that SFP Ventures UK Ltd  also claims   to have managed  large developments in Ipswich and Lowestoft.

I spent several hours Googling to substantiate these claims.  I found no evidence to prove that SFP Ventures UK Ltd  have managed developments in Ipswich, Lowestoft, Portugal or anywhere else for that matter. I also understand that Thanet Council has never been provided with independent, corroborative evidence which demonstrates that the company have managed any building development projects.  

I checked SFP Ventures UK Ltd  vital statistics on the Companies House website. According to it’s latest accounts it had a turnover of £1.9million in 2011. After paying its creditors the company made an operating loss of £859.

These are not the type of accounts  I would reasonably expect to see  from a company which Mr Painter describes as having a “strong track record” of managing large building developments in Portugal. 

SFP’s  lacklustre financial performance, coupled with its  long record of inactivity at the Pleasurama site,   leads me to wonder whether this company is the right partner to work with Thanet  Council to  deliver  this major £36 million regeneration project.

I also discovered on the Companies House website that  SFP Ventures UK Ltd  recently appointed  a second director who is a 23 year old student. Not wanting to sound ageist,  I doubt whether the vast majority of  23 year olds would have the experience, skill or  knowledge to be a Director of a  company which according to Mr Painter has a “strong track record”  of managing large multi £million building projects in Portugal and elsewhere.

SFP Ventures UK Ltd the current developer, its predecessor company SFP Venture Partners Ltd and it’s parent company SFP Services Ltd  (both of whom are off-shore companies which have never been registered at Companies House)  have been involved in the development of the Pleasrurama site for more than 10 years. In that time precious little work  has taken place, apart from turning a large piece of publically owned and valuable real estate into a disgraceful eyesore.

I note Mr Painter’s suggestion in his capacity as SFP’s official spokesman and sales agent, that to overcome the decade of delays your readers “should be shouting at Councillors” to encourage them to reach a new agreement  which includes the Council handing over the freehold of an extremely valuable plot of prime site public land to his clients for the princely sum of £3 million.

I totally agree with Mr Painter about the shouting!  However, I suggest that your readers should actually be shouting at Councillors to encourage them to carefully review how the blot on our landscape we fondly call the Pleasurama development  came about, and  give thoughtful consideration as to whether  Mr Painter’s client is actually the most suitable organisation to continue the development of this site.

Failure to take  a long hard look at the proposed new agreement with SFP might, despite the £3 million, cost the Council and the people of Thanet dear.

 Cllr Ian Driver

I think this is the first time that a Councillor has publicly gone as far as to say the company behind the venture doesn’t appear to exist in any real sense.

I guess this really does leave the onus on those supporting the development to show us some evidence of the other developments this company is responsible for.

Another taxi office opening in Ramsgate town centre, that’s two in two weeks.

Last nights sketch in The Belgian Café didn’t go that well, my excuse being that people kept moving 

I will probably ramble on here

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.