Communication

This is the reality of 18 years of piss poor communication from Thanet Councillors. Promises made and broken by a series of Conservative and Labour Councillors and lack of a will to take the land back and develop it for Leisure.
This is the press release from FORS on the 1st of September 2014 and sod all has changed. The only thing to change hands is the Freehold of the land.

Dated: Monday, 01 September 2014

Re: Pleasurama Site

Following the release of the Cabinet papers today Friends of Ramsgate Seafront would like to make it clear that the proposed deal with the current builders Cardy allowing them to rewrite the Development Agreement with TDC is inappropriate and is the wrong use for the site.

Allowing for the caveat that Planning has been granted in 2004 and “work” had started it is unbelievable that TDC would still be considering allowing housing on this site despite their own call for leisure related activities in their own plan (Ramsgate Renaissance documents) in 1998.

Notwithstanding this we believe that 3 things are made clear in the new Development Agreement that will have to be signed by TDC and Cardy before building can start.

1. The Freehold of the site must remain with Thanet District Council and not be sold to Cardy or any other party
2. That the cliff face maintenance be part of the leaseholders responsibility as it used to be up until the current leases were assigned
3. That proper “due diligence” be done on the new developer to ensure that Shaun Patrick Keegan and his associates cannot benefit in any way from any profits ensuing when the development is sold

FORS want to make it clear that we in no way condone the Council’s actions however we understand the position past actions by previous administrations have placed the Council in a very difficult situation.

Further to this a previous member of FORS asked TDC in an Freedom of Information the following questions

Dear Thanet District Council,
Please provide details of any payments the developer(s)/buyer(s) of the Royal Sands Development, Ramsgate is/are contractually bound to pay Thanet District Council as per any legally extant planning permission, development agreement, contract of sale, memorandum of understanding OR any other document which might contain this information.
Where payments have or will be made please provide the following information for each amount:
(a) Name of organisation providing the payment
(b) Purpose of payment
(c) Date funds paid/will be paid to the council
(d) Details of any conditions attached to payment
Yours faithfully,

Their answer last May (2015) was to refuse citing the following answer

 Thank you for your communication received on 15/04/2015 where you
requested information about contractual payments regarding the Royal Sands
Development.
 
I apologise for the delay in responding to your request, it is the
councils intention to publish this information once the legal process
concludes so this information is exempt under section 22 of the Freedom of
Information Act and is therefore being withheld. 

So like any concerned ratepayer we all sat back and waited, well on the 20th July 2016 all contract work was concluded with the payment of the outstanding £3M and the required statement was made by TDC as follows:

"Thanet District Council can confirm that the sale of the former Pleasurama site on Ramsgate seafront completed on Wednesday 20 July 2016 with Cardy Ramsgate Ltd.
The council has received the monies from this sale.
The site has transferred to the south-east based firm who will be responsible for delivery of the scheme.
Once complete, the development is set to include a hotel, residential apartments, leisure/retail facilities, cafes, shops and a playground. This is in line with the existing planning consent.
The scheme is expected to employ up to 200 people. This would include opportunities during construction and jobs in the hotel trade, commercial units and in the servicing of the residential areas.
The council understands separately that Cardy Construction Ltd. has filed a notice of intent to appoint an administrator. The council does not have any further information in relation to this process at this stage.
The Sale Agreement for the site was completed on 13 March 2015. This marked the exchange of contracts binding the council to complete the transfer of the land.
As with the original development agreement, the council retains ownership of the cliff wall and completed works here in April 2016."

Now if you compare the promise to the actual it is patently obvious that the response last May is a denial of the right of the individual to have the truth. 

 18 long years Ramsgate has been waiting for this scandal to be sorted and time and time again what we get are broken promises. It has to stop. Administrations promise to sort out the messes caused by previous administrations yet all they succeed in doing is making it worse.

Follow the story on the original blog here http://pleasurama.blogspot.co.uk/