I have received some more correspondence with Alan Poole
over Pleasurama so here it is with my reply.
From: janet woods
Sent: 16 January 2013 18:56
To: cllr-Alan Poole
Subject: Pleasurama
Dear councillor Poole
Your recent reply to my letter in the Gazette spoke of live
agreements,live
planning application and live leases for the site.
Would you be so kind as to explain in lay terms exactly what
that
means,and
why you are seeking to make it easier for SFP to secure
funding.
Please also explain the sentence "any attempt to
unilaterally change the
current situation would most likely be unsuccessful and very
expensive"
Thanks
Janet woods
On 21 Jan 2013, at 18:22, "Alan Poole" wrote:
Hi Janet,
Sorry for delay in replying.......I had a bad dose of
something last week
and only now getting over it (flu?)....................
SFP currently have a valid Development Agreement (signed
2009) and valid
leases (99 years I believe) for the Royal Sands
site...........it is very
unlikely that we would be able to reposes the site even with
court action
before 2017 at the earliest..........even then our legal
advice is it
would
be very expensive and by no means a certainty.
We cannot unilaterally change the Development
Agreement.............any
changes have to be agreed by both sides. This is why we are
currently in
discussions with SFP. They wish to make changes to make it
easier for them
to obtain funding from the banks to complete the
development. Any changes
need TDC agreement so we need to be very careful as to what
we
agree...........we have inserted a number of
safeguards.......but nothing
is
entirely risk-free.
SFP have an extant (valid) Planning Permission for the
development............we cannot make any changes to the
Planning
Permission
without their agreement..........it is very unlikely that
they would want
to
start from scratch again as they would need to complete a
Flood Risk
Assessment and go through the whole Planning
Process.................
As this problem has been dragging on for more years than I
care to
remember
I believe most Ramsgate residents would now like to see the
site developed
asap.
If SFP can't raise the funds it simply won't get
built.............in the
current financial climate there are not hordes of developers
waiting in
the
wings to take over.............
I hope this explains the current situation.
Regards,
Alan
From: janet woods
Sent: 21 January 2013 22:13
To: Alan Poole
Subject: Re: Pleasurama
Hi thanks for reply
I know you were not in control in 2009 when the agreement
was made but,
I would like some clarification on a few points
Does the validity of the lease have any conditions?
i.e time for completion of building etc.
Have SFP broken any of the conditions?
You say SFP want to make changes to the agreement, would
that include
obtaining freehold of site?
What are your safeguards?
How far has TDC got in building a legal case for recovering
the lease?
has a realistic assessment been done?
Do you agree that TDC's collusion with avoiding a flood risk
assessment is
irresponsible?
Yes I agree that all would like to see the site developed,
but not with the
wrong development, wouldn't you rather wait until 2017 for
the right
development, rather than have the wrong development in 2015
or whenever SFP
can find the finances ?and that might be completion of
building ,then more
time for selling and for retail to be in place
Would you concur that...the key to it all seems to be SFP
need the freehold
to get the finances in place?
Surely if they can't finance the development 14 years
later!! they have
defaulted on the agreement.
I believe that TDC are wrong to consider selling the
freehold to SFP, when
SFP have no previous development experience and obvious lack
of funds.
What would the consequences be for TDC, should SFP sell the
freehold on
without completion of the building on the site?
Janet woods
From: "Alan Poole"
Date: 22 January 2013 13:41:42 GMT
To: "'janet woods'"
Subject: RE: Pleasurama
Hi Janet,
The details of the new proposed Development Agreement are
commercially
sensitive and at this stage I am not legally allowed to
divulge them.......
once (if) the Development Agreement is signed I will make it
public.
All Councillors have received the information on 'pink'
.............which
they are not legally allowed to divulge to the public.
As far as I'm aware SFP are not in breach of any conditions.
TDC does not have any grounds for starting a legal case to
recover the
leases.........we would be laughed out of court!
TDC are not colluding with SFP to avoid a 'Flood Risk
Assessment'..............the FRA Rules changed AFTER the
Planning
Application was approved and cannot be applied
retrospectively. Requesting a
FRA would serve no purpose other than to delay the
development and add
further to the costs...........
For clarity SFP are not legally obliged to complete a FRA in
spite of what
Michael Childs and Ian Driver are claiming.
My understanding of the FRA rules is that they basically do
not allow
residential accommodation on the ground floor in a flood
risk
zone...............the Royal Sands development does not have
residential
accommodation on the ground floor..............
It is proposed to transfer the 'freehold' to SFP ONCE they
have proved to
the Council's Section 151 Officer that they have secured
sufficient funding
to complete the whole development and they have signed up an
operator for
the hotel...........we also have to carry out 'due
diligence' procedures.
In the proposed Development Agreement SFP will have to pay
upfront for the
'freehold' (to TDC) before the new Development Agreement is
signed. In the
current Agreement (2009) they would have gained the
'freehold' on
completion.
It is estimated that it will take 18 to 24 months to
complete the project
once building has restarted.
If they sell-on the 'freehold' the new buyer will be legally
obliged to
complete the development as per the Planning Permission and
the Development
Agreement...........
I'm happy for you to pass this info to Michael Childs and
Ian Driver as they
are both asking the same questions............
Regards,
Alan
Initial thoughts
1. What were the original conditions that Alan states SFP
are not in breach of, does anyone have a copy?
2. Presumably it is the officers who have put them on a pink
form, but given there is no other
developer in the frame, how can they be commercially sensitive? Politically
sensitive seems more likely. Is it worth an FOI?
The effect is we cannot scrutinise the terms of the
Development agreement, before it is signed, and that will be too late
Janet et al. The original conditions that Alan is talking
about, development agreements and leases can be found here
http://michaelsbookshop.com/pda/
series of links to the documents at the top of the page.
I think the key problem with them is that they weren’t well
written, particularly in terms of resolving the sort of problem we have now,
where the developer doesn’t appear to have funding to proceed.
I think legally the situation is that the developer is
obliged to have finished the development by 2017 and the council would need to
show that the developer couldn’t do this in order to get the site back without
risking litigation, where the developer SFP and the contractor Cardy took legal
action to recover the monies they have spent on the development to date.
The financial arrangement for the 2009 variation were
roughly that the development would cost £22m paid for by Wetmore the hotel
company putting up £5m, Cardy Construction putting up £1.5m, and SFP getting a
bank loan for the rest.
I think the developer:
Contributed £600,000 to the new road layout, the layout was
apparently insisted on by KCC but obviously doesn’t make sense in several ways,
the roundabout at the pavillon end being far too big and now having metered
parking all round it. The roundabout and bus stop at the other end, for PSV
access via the sloping viaduct that would probably not be able to take the
load, for the expected life of the development.
Contributed £100,000 to the main cliff façade coating and
repair contract the rest the total was about £1m was paid for by TDC. Part of
this repair failed almost immediately and had to be repaired and paid for by
TDC. TDC had another survey around the beginning of 2012, this list a number of
repairs and work that wasn’t done at the time of the first contract, my guess
is they will cost between £100,000 and £300,000 although this would be much
more if they underpin the parts that don’t have proper foundations. The ongoing
key problem here being that the space, 4metres, between the back of the
development and the front of the cliff, would mean any repairs to the cliff,
once the development has been built, would have to take place in what is a 22
metre deep canyon 4metres wide; possible, but very expensive.
The other expenses incurred were the surface drain, I think
this was subcontracted by Cardy Construction, cost about £800,000 and I don’t
know if this cost has been passed on to the developer.
Then there is the work that Cardy Construction did on site,
the three men and a digger, this was quite a surprise to me as the MD of Cardy
Construction told me that first phase would be a pile boring team and the
foundations would only take about six weeks to complete. A key issue here is
that the foundations that have been completed are not screwed to the bedrock,
but are sitting on the old sand beach, with no EA accredited sea defence
holding the land there in place.
The council say they own the sea defence there, so guess
they would be responsible for any maintenance, they say it dates from 1860 and
the have no plans, surveys or maintenance records relating to it.
I guess the developer also incurred planning costs, I
believe there were about seven sets of plans, mainly because of the height
issue, I don’t think the architects ever managed to produce plans that resolved
this properly, they are however the only plans on the council’s planning
website and therefore must be the only approved plans. I have heard that the
developer has now engaged a different architect to produce the detailed
construction plans, so I don’t know if the various plans were paid for.
We then come to the flood risk, when the first set of plans
were produced they didn’t show any definite height above sea level for the base
of the building and appeared to show a pedestrian escape from the development
to the cliff top.
As the thing dragged on and attempts to get the top under
the cliff top, it became apparent that the bottom would be fairly low with
regards to flood risk, particularly in a tidal surge storm that we get in
Ramsgate about every 50 years.
I had some correspondence with the EA in order to get them
to say what they thought a safe baseline would be, although this was based on a
pile driven foundation plan that would be fairly slow to collapse in the event
of the 1860 sea defencet failing during a tidal surge storm.
Here is the letter they sent to the developer and the
council about it
http://michaelsbookshop.com/ea/id2.htm
I would say that the situation with this is that building the development without
the fra against EA advice, while within the letter of the law, isn’t likely to
attract serious funding. I guess it would also make it very difficult for
anyone trying to get a mortgage to buy one of the apartments as new builds on
high risk flood zones just don’t normally exist.
Fundamental to all this is that if we move to a situation
where the council tries to get out of the agreements, then we come to the
mistakes made by both the council and the developer. These are best summarised
as both parties considering that they were building a development on an
ordinary flat site away from either the cliff or the sea. I think the council
wanted to sell the site as this and architect designed a building that would
probably have worked well enough for this sort of site.
In a general sense it is very unusual to build residential
developments on a narrow band of land, in this case reclaimed beach, between an
unsupported chalk cliff and the sea, so there aren’t really comparisons. The
buildings further along Marina Esplanade are formed of arches that act as a
cliff support structure, it should be understood that the concrete façade behind
the Pleasurama site is not designed to be a cliff support structure.
Regards Michael.
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