Thanet District Council’s response to its war on Thanet blogs

With some of the accredited media somewhat discredited at the moment - The News of the World has gone. The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times follow?? – there is an added irony to this post.

Some of you will remember that about a month ago TDC decided to stop sending press releases to me and other non accredited news sources, see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2011/06/thanet-district-councils-new-war-on.html

My take on this is, as several thousand local people read this blog and read my press release blog – where I published the TDC press releases and other TDC information before the council stopped cooperating with me – then information supplied by the council to me and the very few other prominent local bloggers for publication, should be treated differently to information requested by a member of the public, for their personal use.

Now if I want to ask the council a question I have to use their freedom of information department and as the foi legislation says the council don’t have to reply to me for a month, they don't.

In fact I used this system to try and find out about their new rules for unaccredited press and a month later I have just now received the replies.

This request relates to the way the council provides information to accredited and non accredited media.

For the purposes of this request I am assuming that a council accredited media source is a media source that receives press releases or can ask the councils press department questions.

Thank you for your communication received on 14/06/2011 entitled Freedom of Information Request 1 where you requested various information regarding the Council's press releases, websites, publications, and accredited media.

The information you requested is as follows. I have numbered my responses according to your original request.

I have tried to make  this easy to follow by putting my questions in blur and the council’s answers in red.

1. Please provide any additional information about the council’s relationship with the media that I haven’t asked for but is held by the council and appears pertinent.

 Please confirm any additional information that you require.

2. Does the council have any accredited media source that is exclusively internet?

 The Council does not have an accredited media source that is exclusively internet.

3. Does the council have any accredited media source where the local media publication is exclusively internet but the same business has paper publications? Your Thanet would be an example of this.

The council does have an accredited media source where the local publication is exclusively internet but the same source has paper publications.

4. Please provide a list of exactly who and which organisations receive council press releases or can ask the council press department questions? Please include in-house and government funded publications?

 The organisations that can currently receive Council press releases and put enquiries through the Council Press Office are as follows:

Academy FM
BBC South East Today
BBC Radio Kent
Heart FM
ITV Meridian
KM-FM
KM Thanet Extra
Thanet Gazette and Thanet Times
Your Thanet/Kent on Sunday
Local Government Association

5. Please provide a list of which publications the council pays to advertise in and an approximate figure for the councils spending on advertising in accredited media?

 The Council has paid to advertise in the following publications:

Heart FM
KMFM
KM Thanet Extra
Thanet Gazette & Thanet Times
Your Thanet/Kent on Sunday

6. Please provide the approximate cost of public information publications funded by the council, including the cost of the council’s various public information websites?

 As you have not specified a period over which you would like the Council’s spend on advertising in accredited media, I have supplied information for 2010/11.

The total that the entire Council spent on advertising for 2010/11 was £105,256.10

As you have not specified which publications or over which period I have provided the information below. The production of these publications is currently under review for future years.

The approximate cost of public information publications funded by the Council for 2010/11 are as follows:

Thanet Matters – 3 editions - Total Cost  = £12,433.00

Youth Matters
Easter edition  = £4,761.00
Summer edition  (combined with Sports Matters) = £6,109.00

The approximate cost of the Council’s various public information websites for 2010/11 is £22,337.78

7. Are there any accredited publications that the council do not contribute to financially in some way?

 The council does not contribute financially to the following accredited publications:

BBC Radio Kent
BBC South East Today
ITV Meridian
Academy FM

8. Does the council have a policy for withdrawing funding including advertising revenue from accredited publications and for what reasons would the council withdraw funding? Would the council for instance withdraw advertising or threaten to withdraw advertising from an accredited news source that criticised the council?

 The council does not have a policy for withdrawing funding, including advertising revenue from accredited publications and would not withdraw advertising from accredited media that criticised the council.

9. Does the council incur any extra costs for adding non accredited news sources to their press release mailing list?

The council does not incur extra cost for adding non accredited media to their press release mailing list but does incur additional resource strain as a result of managing this list and the resulting enquiries.

10. Have any of the council’s accredited news sources requested that the council does not supply press releases to non accredited news sources?

None of the council’s accredited media sources have requested that the council does not supply press releases to non accredited media. Press releases are supplied to everyone via the council’s website and RSS News Feed.

11. Have any of the news sources supplied with press releases up to this point abused them, not adhered to embargos and so on?

 News sources supplied with press releases have not abused them.

12. Have the council’s press department been supplying press releases to and answering questions for individuals or organisations that have no news outlet or obvious public readership?

 The Council Press Office has previously supplied press releases to and answered enquiries from individuals/organisations that have no news outlet or obvious public readership however this practice has now ceased.

13. Up until the present ban on non accredited news sources, my understanding is they were the only point of publication for high definition reproduction of the council’s accompanying press release photographs. What will happen to these photographs now and will the council publish them in high definition online?

 The Council provides high resolution imagery to accredited media sources for their publication. The Council will not be publishing these images in high resolution on its website as we supply them directly to accredited media.

Where appropriate, the Council publishes low resolution images on its website to illustrate new stories. See the following for an example:

http://www.thanet.gov.uk/environment__planning/planning/ldf_and_local_plan/dreamland/dreamland_cinema_building.aspx

14. Does the council have a policy of delaying publication of their press releases to coincide with the publication of the same releases in accredited news sources?

The council does not have a policy of delaying press releases to coincide with the publication of the same releases in accredited media. Releases may, on occasion, be embargoed until a particular date, meaning that the information will then appear in different media at the same time.

15. Has any political pressure or pressure from elected members been put on the council to stop sending press releases to or providing information to non accredited news sources?

Political pressure from elected members has not been put on the council to stop sending press releases to non accredited media. Information and press releases are available to all through our RSS News Feed, web site, customer services, customer feedback and FOI.

16. Does a news sources readership have any effect on its accreditation and if it does what level of readership would be required to gain accreditation?

 Readership does not determine whether or not an individual can access the Council’s Press Office.

17. What criterion does the council use to select accredited news sources?

 In order to qualify as accredited media with the Council it is necessary to be a journalist working for, or on behalf of, a media organisation which is governed by an impartial code of conduct such as the Press Complaints Commission, BBC Trust or OFCOM.

Thanet District Council Meeting Tomorrow, Animal Exports, Airport, Webcasting, Standards.

It looks like this meeting will be covering a lot of issues and I will write something here later today about them if I get time.

The picture above is of a Ramsgate Council meeting, this presumably comes from a time when one was allowed to take pictures of council meetings.

First night flights, there are some night flights occurring around this point in time, my understanding is that these are to fly food to our troops in Afghanistan, I don’t think that anyone I know in Ramsgate objects to these flights.

But it does surprise me that the airport hasn’t taken advantage of this opertunity for positive publicity.

I don’t think the airport operator has any concept of taking the town of Ramsgate with them on anything at all, minor pr opportunities like announcing when the Red Arrows or some other interesting aircraft are likely to be flying over the town, so that residents have an opportunity to take a picture, seem to be something they have missed.

One of the noisest and most disruptive businesses in Ramsgate was the Sally Line and yet this business was well supported by Ramsgate residents. Infratil just don’t seem to have got the message and will fly a noisy plane at 7am on still Sunday morning low over the town when the obviously don’t need to or carry on endless low training flights over the town when they could obviously do this somewhere where hardly anyone lives. Well now the have got lot peoples backs up and they mostly have themselves to blame.

Night flights has become a party political issue, how daft can you get, well I suppose as flights over Ramsgate have even been a racist issue, anything goes.

Rumour is that there is Infratil are keen to sell Manston and that some other operators have been sniffing around, as Infratil lost £3m last year on their UK airport business this raises the interesting question of what anyone would pay for a business that loses that much a year. 


I suppose the only logical way forward for the airport is to expand the aspect of it that has been successful which mostly relates to aviation heritage, a base for air shows and short haul flights that don’t make much noise anyway.    

There will be a question for the leader I suppose like a mini PMQ, this is what it says:

“1.1       According to Council Procedure Rule 14, a Member of the Council may ask a Member of the Cabinet or the Chairman of any Committee or Sub-Committee, a question on any matter in relation to which the Council has powers or duties or which affects the district, providing they have given at least five working days notice in writing of the question, limited to fifty words.

2.0       The Current Situation

2.1       On 4 July 2011, the Democratic Services & Scrutiny Manager received from Councillor Poole the following question addressed to Councillor Bayford:

2.2       “Substantial ERDF grants were given to a number of local businesses during the early 2000s, following a stringent process of selection.   Will you explain why, from 2003 onwards, there wasn’t an effective process to ensure the monies were spent according to the strict criteria used when the grants were agreed?”

I am not so sure what it means.

On to the business of webcasting council meetings, apparently at the moment it costs the council about £250 in staff costs to convert the DVD, that they already make, into the right file format and put it online.

Anyone who has ever put a dvd on Youtube will probably wonder if they paid an officer to sit there while the file converted and went up on the internet.

To me converting a video file means opening it in the right program and going off and doing something else while the computer gets on with the job and then coming back and finding the file in your Youtube account, clicking on upload and then going off and doing something else while it uploads.

When the idea was first suggested I told the council that if they sent me the dvd I would be happy to put it online for them, for nothing. The dvds get made anyway you understand.    

Then there is the live animal transport motion, this isn’t something you have to clean up with a shovel, but the following:

1.1.      Council Procedure Rule No. 16 governs the process for motions on notice being submitted to Council.  

1.2.1        The following motion on notice has been received from Councillor Fenner in accordance with the Council Procedure Rules:

“Council resolves to seek a legal opinion on whether TDC can lawfully ban the transportation of live farm animals from the Port of Ramsgate on the ground that they are ‘sentient beings’ and not ‘goods’.” 

Update, news of the council meeting is slowly filtering out, with Simon Moores rather bizarre tweet “After a very long day indeed, tonight's Council meeting was best viewed through the lens of Lewis Carroll's 'Alice in Wonderland'”

And this from the Labour group http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/711/id8.htm

Nothing from the council press and information department yet.    

Thanet District Council Publishes Draft Accounts

These are available as pdf file at http://www.thanet.gov.uk/pdf/Draft%20Statement%20of%20Accounts%2010-11%20updated.pdf the advantages here are mainly you can search the whole document, if you haven’t got a search box pressing Ctrl and f at the same time usually does the trick. For example if you want to find the chief executives golden handshake you put “chief executive” in the search box and keep pressing enter until the following comes up:

“The Authority terminated the contracts of a number of employees in 2011/12 incurring liabilities of £694k (£111 in 2010/11). Of this total, £92k is payable to the Chief Executive, in the form of compensation for loss of office and enhanced pension benefits of £81k, a further £67k was payable to the Director of Regeneration Services for loss of office and enhanced pension benefits of £83k, these would be disclosed in note 35 however, although the restructure was agreed in 10/11 and a as a result the cost accrued, the staff will not leave until 2011/12. The remaining £370k is payable to 13 officers from various services who were made redundant as part of the Authority’s restructure.”

If like me you are interested in Pleasurama type it in the search box and the following will come up:

The Council has entered into a development agreement with SFP Ventures (UK) Limited (SFP) for the Pleasurama site. The Council is the freehold owner of the property. The developer has agreed to carry out development works on the property in accordance with the agreement. The Council have granted leases to SFP and will transfer the freehold interest when the works have been completed. As the leases are long term (199 years) and the intention is to transfer the freehold assets, any sales will be treated as a disposal. An overage payment will be due from the developer on the sale of each unit developed on the site. These payments will be treated as capital receipts. However, due to the economic downturn in the property market, it is not possible to foresee when the overage payments may materialize and therefore a contingent liability has been shown within the accounts.

Alternatively if your computer has difficulties with pdf documents click on this link for the draft accounts published as a series of linked webpages http://www.thanet.gov.uk/council__democracy/council_budgets__spending/statement_of_accounts_2010.aspx when you get to the end of one page click on the link next to the word “next” to get to the next page.

I had a bit of a funny dialogue with the council over the accounts, back around the 20^th of last month the council put a statement saying the accounts were coming out in the latest news part of their website.

I complained to them that this was important information and should have been included in their news feeds, they then moved it from the latest news section and told me that it wasn’t a news item but would be included in their news feeds next year.

I then asked them where the accounts actually were on their website and they said they would put them on their website on the 8^th of this month. They didn’t appear then so I asked them again today and the said they were just going to put them on their website, well now the have done.

I don’t know whether to read anything into this apparent reluctance to publish them, and of course now I am no longer a council accredited news source I don’t receive their press releases so I don’t know if they have issued one saying that their accounts have now been published. Possibly they just don’t think that they are that important, possibly they don’t think the unborn denizens of Thanet would be able to read a balance sheet.  

Searching the accounts for East Kent Opportunities helps to understand the Eurokent business, this is an example of what I mean.

“The additional £2.541m represents the liability owed to Kent County Council for the authority’s share of the cost of construction of the spine road at Westwood, as part of the East Kent Opportunities Partnership agreement. Kent County Council passed a decision on 10 June 2010 to defer repayment to 2013/14.”

A lot of money for roundabouts that go nowhere in the middle of some fields, no wonder they want to turn it into a housing estate.     

I may ramble on about the accounts if I am in the mood.    

The automated librarian and the manual bookseller

Local Book Sale

I have just changed all the local books in the shop window and put all the sun damaged, condensation damaged ones, various local books that may or may not have something wrong with them, various proof and production copies, into a sale.

Ramsgate Library Closed This Week

This is what it says on the KCC website “Ramsgate Library will be closed 11th till 19th July for self-service installation. Our apologies for any inconvenience caused.” It seems to be one of those council announcements that you can only find if you already know the information.  

If there is a task in the life of a shop assistant that I would wish was automated it is window dressing, having read the press release with interest I am considering some sort of self service installation in my bookshop. Something that perhaps adds new terror to the phrase; “are you being served?”

This business with our local government use of the internet is so incredibly potty that words often fail, Google takes one to www.kent.gov.uk/ramsgatelibrary if you do a search for Ramsgate Library, this page doesn’t actually tell you that the library is closed, to find this out you need http://www.kent.gov.uk/KCC.Libraries.Web.Sites.Public/LibraryDetails.aspx?aid=0&lid=87 I only managed to find this page because I already knew the library was closed. Of course the really useful thing the library could do to save staff time is to make their local history archives available online. The collections of old photographs, local paper archives, rate books and so on. I suspect that there is however a direct relationship between library funding and the number of people visiting the library, council solution, go to the library to visit a machine. In Margate they have upped library visitor numbers by making people go to the library for council services, they even have prizes for this making of a library not really a place you would visit for a quiet read.

It says on the library website: Book a PC in our brand new IT suite! If you need help our Computer Buddy will get you started on the basics. The Computer Buddy is at Ramsgate Library on Mondays 9am to 12noon, Wednesdays 2pm to 4pm, Thursdays 10am to 1pm, Fridays 10am to 1pm and fortnightly on Saturdays 9am to 11am.

Is this computer buddy some sort of automated librarian? Will this computer buddy be replaced by a machine? Will all the books be replaced by some sort of machine? With the introduction of the Kindle reader is there any future in libraries, do we still need them? Over the last few years I have watched nearly all of the bookshops close, for the most part what is left are shops that sell books, either that no one wants or hardly anyone can afford.

The problem mostly relates to a thing called the “Net Book Agreement” this was a price fixing agreement that fixed the minimum price of books in the UK, strangly this didn’t have the effect that one would expect of making books here more expensive, quite the opposite.

The idea of this was that the big and powerful retail chains, supermarkets and so on left the book world alone and small bookshops doing unprofitable or loss making business like, having specialist stock, promoting new authors and so on could subsidise this with the profits on bestsellers.

This also led to a flowing of literature in the UK between about 1940 and 1990, all over now I’m afraid, theoretically it is much easier to get published now, in reality to get something good published and on sale at a reasonable price where people can find it, well that’s another matter.

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.

 

Day of shopping at WC, cheap artists materials and some pictures of Ramsgate

I had reached a point where I had pretty much run out of clothes that didn’t make me look like a tramp, not something beneficial for a shop assistant, so I had to make one of my rare excursions to the big Tesco and TK Max.

Tesco seem to be one of the only places that keep trousers for fat men with short legs, note the ones that say “active waistband” on them mean that they get bigger when you drink a pot of tea, or a couple of pints, or eat your lunch.

TK Max have shirts that are ok and quality cooking equipment, today a quality stoneware cooking pot with a lip so the pastry has something to sit on and a stainless steel saucepan to replace the one the handle fell off. I thought that was it however but in the end of the toys they have some half price proper make artists materials, at half price, Windsor and Newton paints and so on.

I bought myself a tin of 6 Derwent skintone colouring pencils reduced from £11 to £6 so I came away from the unpleasant business of shopping with a toy.

No pictures of WC as they don’t allow photography, however a few of Ramsgate mostly take after delivering Brownies.

Here are the pictures http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/netbook611/id4.htm I may add some comment when I have had a look at them.

As you can see, the dodgy looking bit of the Pleasurama cliff wall looks well dodgy and the work on site is continuing at snails pace.

Dredging is occurring in the area of the new pontoon, which should be beneficial.

Some MG cars on Harbour Parade and a white seagull with a brown head, either a special breed or it had been at the chocolate source.

The makeover of the Admiral Harvey is looking good and it is very good to see work staring on the large empty house in Albion Place.

Thanet District Council Issues New Statement on Live animal Exports From Ramsgate Harbour.

Here is the link http://www.thanet.gov.uk/news/latest_press_releases/animal_exports_legal_advice.aspx and here is the link to the legal advice http://www.thanet.gov.uk/pdf/84853%20Ramsgate%20Harbour%20Thanet%20District%20Council%20Advice%202306201.pdf

The point that they seem to have missed is any mention of the whether or not the council have an animal welfare policy and if it has what it says. I could foi them and would probably get an answer in about a month, does anyone else want to try?

I will write to some of the councillors and see if any of them reply.  

Margate Mistakes?

I am always a bit wary about posting Margate issues, the truth is that I don’t understand them properly.

The first one is the new Tesco under Arlington House, to be honest I was quite surprised that so many people seem top be against this one, viewed from the outside I looks like anything would be preferable to what’s there now.

As most of you probably know that when it came before the council planning committee that is equally spit along party lines the voting for and against was equal. Perhaps there is a party whip at planning level or perhaps it just went like that I don’t really know.

This left it in the hands of the new independent chair of planning, Jack Cohen, to cast the deciding vote, which meant it has now gone to central government for a decisioin.

My understanding is with the new localism bill in the offing, central government are much more reluctant to overrule local government in these issues, so without considerable local pressure they are not very likely to call in the pans.

It is also my understanding that you have until this Friday to write to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Eric Pickles, asking him to have the plans called in.

The email addresses for this and you need to copy the email to both of them are; The National Planning Casework Unit at npcu@gowm.gsi.gov.uk and eric.pickles@communities.gsi.gov.uk

You need to quote the application ref F/TH/10/1061 and your name and address.

 I have also been sent some artist’s impressions of the effect of the Margate Football Club development on Hartsdown Park, they are before and after pictures, I am not sure how realistic they are. However the map on the plans that I have published before does seem to show the park being pretty much cut in half by the fencing for the artificial pitches.