Councillors to Visit Hart Leisure Centre

The minutes of last week’s Overview & Scrutiny Meeting  are here:

http://www.shepway.gov.uk/moderngov/ieListDocuments.aspx…
They include this:
“Examples of leisure centres – it is anticipated that members of the Princes Parade Working Group, Overview and Scrutiny Committee and officers will visit the Hart Leisure Centre in Hampshire which is of a similar size to the proposed development.”

But the Hart Leisure Centre has many more facilities than are proposed for the Princes Parade leisure centre as these links make clear:http://www.strategicleisure.co.uk/new-23m-hart-leisure-cen…/
https://www.everyoneactive.com/centre/hart-leisure-centre/

We have contacted cabinet members and some officers with the suggestion that wherever the new leisure centre is built, the business should include a proper consultation with the public about what we would facilities we would like to be included. Surely this should be the first stage in any financial viability study or else we could end up with an expensive white elephant. Note that Dover DC id exactly that when they were putting together the plans for their new leisure centre and have published detailed reports on their website. Not all the facilities the public wanted were affordable but that is clearly explained in the report for all to see.

 

Pre Application Advice

We’ve just had a response from Shepway to our Freedom of Information request for the pre application advice the council has given itself:

“I am writing to inform you that we have searched our records and the information you requested is not held by the council. Pre-application advice has not been given; therefore Regulation 12(4)(a) applies to your request. Regulation 12(4)(a) provides an exception to the duty to disclose information when information is not held.”

Really?

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/pre_application_advice_re_prince?nocache=incoming-1009432#incoming-1009432

 

Hythe Pool Subsidy

At yesterday evening’s full council. Councillor Len Laws asked about the subsidy the current swimming pool receives from the council. Councillor Pascoe’s answer to Len Laws question about annual subsidy for the Hythe pool was that the sums amounted to the difference between income and expenditure. Periods of long closure and cost of repairs had a major impact. Thus 2014/15 the subsidy was £287,980; 2015/16 it was £342,789; 2016/17 it was £501,284. He couldn’t come up with a figure for 2013/14 when the pool was open all year with no major repairs.

Save Princes Parade has never doubted that the current pool costs the council money and we would support a new facility in the right location. However we don’t think think Princes Parade is the right location for a number of reasons including that ground conditions make it a very expensive site to develop.

However the council has still not proven that the proposed new leisure facility will not also need a big subsidy. At the cabinet meeting also held yesterday evening the members voted to accept the recommendation which included commissioning a report of the business case for the leisure centre but no one raised the question of why this will be done after the submission of the planning application and after they have spent around £500k preparing that application.

 

Relevant Council Meetings Next Week

Just to remind you that there are 2 relevant council meetings next week. Cabinet is at 5pm on Wednesday and they will be discussing the pay & display for Princes Parade and Sandgate Esplanade as well as the Princes Parade Development Project Strategy and the latest version of the Local Plan. The last 2 items are also on the agenda for the Overview & Scrutiny Committee on Thursday at 7pm. Please try to go along to these meetings – having people in the public gallery should remind the councillors why they are there.

Reply from David Monk re Contamination

A reply from David Monk in response to a query about the contamination on Princes Parade:

“Thank you for your query. I can confirm that that the issue of contamination will be addressed in detail in the Environmental Statement (ES) accompanying the, soon to be submitted, planning application within a chapter covering geo-environment , land contamination and ground conditions. This document will include a number of suggested remediation measures..

The information within the ES will be reviewed by the Environment Agency, as part of the statutory consultation process, and it is anticipated that they will suggest that a number of planning conditions be included as part of any planning permission. It is anticipated that such conditions will require further investigative work prior to the commencement of the development in order that the necessary remediation measures may be agreed and finalised. Such conditions are likely to require further survey work to be undertaken to establish, in more detail, the extent, scale and nature of the contamination as well as providing a further assessment of the risks to the following :-

Human health;
Property (existing or proposed) including buildings, crops, livestock, pets,
woodland and service lines and pipes,
Adjoining land,
Ground waters and surface waters,
Ecological systems,
Archaeological sites and ancient monuments.

Once this assessment has been undertaken it will be is necessary to a submit, to the Local Planning Authority for their approval, a detailed remediation scheme to bring the site to a condition suitable for the intended use by removing unacceptable risks to human health, buildings and other property and the natural and historical environment. Such a scheme will need to include details of all works to be undertaken, proposed remediation objectives and remediation criteria, a timetable of works, site management procedures and a verification plan.

Following the implementation of the remediation scheme, and prior to commencement of the main development, a verification report demonstrating completion of the works and the effectiveness of the remediation will need to be submitted to and approved in writing by the Local Planning Authority. The report will need to include the results of any sampling and monitoring carried out in accordance with the approved verification plan to demonstrate that the site remediation criteria have been met. It will also need to include details of longer-term monitoring of pollutant linkages and maintenance and arrangements for contingency action, as identified in the verification plan, and the mechanism for reporting of this to the Local Planning Authority.

I trust that information is of assistance and reassures you that there are sufficient checks and balances in place to ensure that the scheme will not pose a risk to the health and safety of local residents and visitors to the area.”

Overview & Scrutiny Meeting

At their meeting next week Shepway’s Overview & Scrutiny Committee will discuss this report. As we already know from the Working Group minutes the council intends to look at things like the business plan for the new leisure centre, land disposal and capital funding but only once the planning application has been submitted. As we have said before, surely this is the wrong way round? The target is for the leisure centre to open in 2020 but the risk assessment acknowledges a medium risk that the project could be delayed.
http://www.shepway.gov.uk/moderngov/documents/s24186/ros20170711%20Princes%20Parade%20Cabinet%20190717.pdf

Pre Application Advice

Having been previously promised that the pre application advice from the council to itself would be published when the planning application was submitted, we emailed the head of planning on 15th June to ask him to confirm this and if it wasn’t the case then to treat the email as an FoI request. No response. So we chased him by email on 19th June. No response. So we emailed princesparade@shepway.gov.uk (from where the original promise came) on 23rd June. Still no response. So we have submitted this request above – now they can’t ignore us.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/pre_application_advice_re_prince

 

Meeting of Princes Parade Working Group

There is a meeting of the Princes Parade Working Group (ie a sub set of the Shepway District Council Cabinet) next week. The council say that the public cannot attend the meeting. However, it’s good to see that all our arguments for transparency have had some effect as the meeting is shown on the calendar on Shepway’s website and the minutes of the previous meeting have been published albeit not very useful ones.http://www.shepway.gov.uk/moderngov/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=455&MId=4355

We did challenge the exclusion of the public and this is the answer we received from the council  “Princess Parade Working group is an internal working group and is not a committee of the Council. It is important to note that the working group does not have decision making powers. The rules do not allow members of the public to attend the meeting.The minutes of the meeting will be published on Modgov as soon as possible.” We have challenged this response because the document setting out the rules for working groups does not specifically exclude the public and also we disagree that the working group does not have decision making powers. If it doesn’t, what is the point of it? It cannot be just to brief cabinet members since not all cabinet members belong to the group and the working group must surely be giving some sort of feedback/steer to the officers which will influence the fate of PP.