I personally think residential building here would be a foolish idea. CT10 Charities has leased the Culmers Land allotments and 'park' to Broadstairs TC until 5 years time. The CT10 Charity has already tried to get planning consent for building houses on Culmers Land and quite rightly has been turned down. If our Council then puts housing into this area, a precedent is then available to CT10 Charities to resurrect its plans and good bye allotments and park.
Parking in Broadstairs is already a problem for locals and visitors alike. Broadstairs is a popular tourist town and needs its visitors. A decent Coach Park and car park with a route through Culmers Land to The Harbour is a 'tourist encouraging' asset. In promoting Broadstairs for visitors, Vere Road is ideally situated at the the top of the High Street and visitors have the option to walk along the High Street to the benefit of all business premises located there.One might suggest, with the past neglect of Vere Rd Car Park and its toilets, that turning it into the Town's major coach and park car and improving it is long overdue. Is it promoted to all Coach operators as an ideal location to disembark coachloads of visitors and to park-up? I suspect not. As for the idea that coaches can drop off and then push off to park up in Cliftonville, this is risible; extra traffic on our roads; the time it would take back and forth; the extra pollution; hardly an environmental, sustainable option.
What can you do about it? There is to be a meeting in Pierremont Hall, Broadstairs on Wednesday 14th May from 5pm-8pm. Go and argue your case there and get onto your local Councillors and tell them what you think. TDC seems to 'consult' a great deal without listening to other ideas so go and be consulted and let's see if commonsense can prevail.
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7 comments:
Bertie the rub here is we have local government to protect less profitable things like coach parking which is necessary to our economy and they are failing us. Here in Ramsgate we have lost our main sands car park this year, given away by the council as part of the dangerous Pleasurama development.
The Primary Care Trust tried to get planning permssion for a health centre in Vere Road but it was turned down on the grounds the town needed to keep the car/coach park and not too many patients would make it back up the hill!! There was some daft scheme to run a shuttle bus to the High Street for those who had walked. The plan was amended to give access from the road before it dipped but that wasn't accepted.If this land is sold for housing then the vista over the fence will hardly be enticing and the path through the allotments presumably closed. If the coach park is kept and some housing allowed can you really see housholders happy to have coaches so near to their property?
Have a look on ukplanning for Thanet District Council at application F/TH/03/1017 and see why the council turned down the plan for the health centre then. Overlooking;steep hill; isolated location etc. Just the place to build more houses!!!
When it was Kent coal mines the message was "Market Forces". No public funding support to enterprise.
Why should the low quality Thanet tourist industry be different ?
There were riots in Ramsgate in the 1830s sparked by the council subsidizing tourism at the expense of everyone else.
Coach parking is not necessary to the Thanet economy. It is a public subsidized prop to a low grade tourist industry.
Build homes on it.
Are you happy 21.23 to have £millions of tax-payers money spent on the TC but something as essential to a sea-side town as a vistors coach-park and car park can be built on?
Lets be clear about this issue; the quality of our three towns for us as 'locals' to enjoy is dependent on thriving high streets and their businesses. A stroll along Margate High Street at the moment is like visiting a 3rd world slum; not enjoyable and as a result few locals go there any more, exacerbating the situation by their absence. Private businesses in our delapidated town centres still provide employment for more people than at Westwood and most importantly, recycle money within the towns by employing local businesses to service their needs from local builders, electricians etc etc.
Tesco in Northdown Road completed a minor building works at their rear last month; builders from London, Hertfordshire and Essex were carrying out the work that any local Thanet company could have provided. When will we wake up to the fact that Westwood Cross and major chains 'export' huge amounts of money out of our local economy that is never re-cycled?
21.23 I would have agreed with you some years ago but today the local tourist industry is for short breaks or day trips rather than the week/fortnight that used to be the case.
The car park at Vere Road is used by schoolparties that come in large numbers through the summer term and do spend money locally,even if only in the beachfront shops. Additionally TEFL students meet and greet their host families there and that market puts a great deal of money into pockets. Perhaps people shouldn't be so dependent on this money but facts are facts and £75(or whatever the going rate)for a student in a household could be the difference between survival and not. Yes, we need quality jobs here that bring in employees but something is better than nothing.
Tdc in the quest to raise further funds lack longterm vision for our local towns and are currently destoying them.Parking is vital to the long term survival of our towns.The recent hike in parking charges has hit local businesses eg in College sq shorterm car park in Margate is now only a quarter full at any given time, why? Local residents are diserting our towncentres, and are declining due to the parking charges. Vere Rd simply is a shorterm money raising excercise and ignores any impact on local business. How many more empty shops in Thanet will be displaying art, which is not the art that the public wants to visit and see and attracts them.For example visior numbers to the Art in the old M&S in Margate have been boosted by school visits? Parking and the wellbeing of our local town centres is something that TDC is ignoring.
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