At last a development is started

With the news that building work has finally restarted  with Blueberry homes (Martin Rigden) on the site and looking like, at last, something is happening. Realising that progress will continue it is hoped that the development will actually make a difference to the seafront which has been blighted since the original fire in 1998.
I suspect that most people will just be glad the eyesore will soon be gone.

Picture dated 15/6/2020

Now it looks like this build will finally get done I thought people might like to read a little of the initial history of how this design was chosen.

In the beginning the Labour administration in June 2002 published a document called "The Ramsgate Renaissance Development Opportunity" which set out the key criteria for the site. (needless to say the final plans followed little of the original concept). By December 2002 the Council had settled on one particular design which was laid out to a full Council meeting and chosen. The main selling point was the participation of Whitbread in the development.
This was proven to be a lie soon after but the Council did nothing about it.

 In May 2003 the Council changed hands in the local elections with Sandy Ezekiel (Tory) winning an outright victory however nothing seemed to have occurred to advance the plans until an application was received in November 2003 (which bore no resemblance to the plan above) however a development of this size should be fully debated and likely to take several months. Imagine the surprise from the residents when planning was granted on the 28th January 2004.

What follows (as an appendix) is the transcript of a debate between the Council and a few residents who were understandably upset by the final plans in April 2004 after planning was granted.

The main issues still (after 16 years) are as follows:-

1. The height of the development. 
This will cut the view from the Eastcliff for both promenade and residents living in Wellington Crescent.

2. The cliff access.
There will be only 4m from the cliff wall and the access to the under building for car parking. Most people believe the cliff face is reinforcement for the cliff however it is mostly decorative and subject to water ingress. It is also the sole responsibility of TDC and previous repair work has been in excess of £1M.

3. The lack of affordable housing on the site.
The original offer set out a payment in lieu of affordable housing (posted here) however this is from 2002 some 18 years ago.

You will note the offer to council was never produced by the original developer SFP Venture Partners (based in Tortola BVI) but by Terry Painter a local estate agent yet the Council accepted it at face value.

Appendix 1

What mistakes were made

With the fate of the building site still unresolved I thought a short history lesson might be appropriate. Many "mistakes" were made, some incompetent but some may have more perverse reasons. In 1998 the listed former station building burnt down. To date no one has been charged with arson but Ramsgate residents know who caused the fire.

After 3 years of wrangling with James "Jimmy" Godden he finally gave in and left leaving TDC to advertise the site for an alternative development. This was in 2002 and led to the release of a document called the Ramsgate Renaissance Commercial Development Opportunity. This document, whilst not ruling out housing, made it clear that the development should be a mixed leisure and retail development.

However after 6 initial inquiries were whittled down to just two the final winning bid emerged at a Full Council meeting in December 2002 which seemed to be residential in nature and proposed by a Broadstairs Estste Agent acting on behalf of (who we now now as Colin Hill) of an offshore comppany registered in Tortola, British Virgin Islands. This company was called SFP Venture Partners.

 I'll leave the reader to decide whether this offer meets the needs of the previous document and whether the money changing hands and the word Whitbread swung the vote.

Needless to say the Labour run Council chose SFP and whether the choice was right or wrong would only be known in the future. These are the original drawings submitted however this author believes this could have been stopped in its tracks with a simple phone call to Whitbread who, in early 2004, denied any involement in the development.

Note the use of Whitbread logo!!

You will also note it wasn't the Council or even an Officer that discovered this fact.

The next opportunity to stop this development was when the actual planning application was made however by this time Labour had lost control of the Council to the Tories under Ezekiel.
The actual application was made in November 2003 and validated 15th December 2003. Now this is where I believe something occurred which was extremely unusual. Planning a development of 107 flats with ancillary uses as per this planning application should have been scrutinised with a fine tooth comb seeing as how prominent the position of the flats however planning was granted on the 28th January 2004 with work to commence within 5 years.

Please note the name of the planning officer (Mr. B. White)

So why did this application not receive the proper investigation it deserved?

No work was actually done on the site within the 5 years stipulated however KCC did move a roundabout and build a storm drain and that has been used as the reason to allow the PP to stand in perpetuity. Whether this is legal is a moot point as TDC will not rescind the PP.

In 2006 a development agreement was signed but a stipulation was that SFP (now a Ltd Company run by Sean Keegan) obtain a £5.6M surety to reimburse the Council should the company fail.

By 2009 it becomes obvious that Sean Keegan had failed to obtain the requisite surety (cynics might believe they had no intention of getting it) and again TDC fail to remove them as developers. The Chief Accountant of TDC actually said to Ezekiel the due diligence was inadequate yet Ezekiel ignored this advice and on the promise of a local builder being bought in (Cardy Developments Ltd) he swung the Council to accept the continuing use of SFP.

In February 2014 this Development Agreement ran out and at this point the land should have been returned to TDC however the legal advice given to TDC was somewhat ambiguous and TDC bottled it and continued to negotiate with a developer who had failed to develop the site since 2003, over 10 years of procrastination.

Since the Freehold was sold for £3.915M to Colin Hill there is simply no legal way the site can be taken back except by paying Colin Hill the money he demands. This is likely to be in the region of £10M and will be similar to the way he ransomed Peterborough Council from 2003 to 2008.