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Historic England do not feel that the additional information addresses their existing objection so the objection still stands. Read the full letter here:

additional – HE comment

At the planning meeting for the Folkestone Seafront Development on Tuesday Councillor Hollingsbee said that there will be a swimming pool and leisure facilities on Princes Parade.

So another cabinet member who doesn’t seem to understand that they still need to get planning permission. Given that the district council will be making the decision on it’s own planning application you’d think they would be more careful not to predetermine the council’s position. About 1h9mins on the video below.

Having considered the additional documents Sandgate Parish Council continues to object to the planning application. additional documents – sandgate comments

In their letter which you can read here Historic England UA18 – Detailed response

Historic England say:

“In summary, in general terms while we accept that the draft local plan has the potential to
provide a good basis for the conservation and enjoyment of the historic environment and
heritage assets as required by the NPPF (para 126) and could provide a strategy for enhancing
the historic environment (para 157), this is seriously undermined by the lack of a sound
evidence base for the historic environment and, in particular, by the inclusion of policy UA18
that promotes development that is fundamentally harmful to a specific, nationally significant
and unique heritage asset. On this basis Historic England cannot support the Shepway Places
and Policies Submission draft Local Plan and believes it to be inconsistent with national
policy and to be unsound.”

If you made a comment on the planning application, you will have been notified that Shepway are now consulting on some additional documents. These documents are the result of correspondence between the planning officer and the applicant. Given that both parties are Shepway District Council this transparency is very welcome but we are disappointed that they have withheld the most important document which includes the financial viability calculations.

The good news is that these calculations have been made available to Historic England so there will be some independent scrutiny of them.

You can find the new documents here: https://searchplanapps.shepway.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?keyVal=OV593HNZKSO00&activeTab=summary  

under documents.

The relevant reports were uploaded on 21 March 2018. Ignore all the documents called “EIA post..” and look for the covering letter and the appendices.

As you will see the arguments are now quite technical. We will be sending in a comment on behalf of the campaign but we don’t think there is any need for members of the public to comment on these new documents unless you really want to or have specialist knowledge.

The Princes Parade Working Group ( a sub committee of Shepway District Council’s cabinet) met in private on 13th March.

The minutes have been published and you can read them on the link below – though they don’t reveal much detail.

The things that were discussed included the business case of the leisure centre; procurement (appointment of contractors); financial viability/ a comparison of PP vs Nickoll’s Quarry; soft market testing – developers for the residential element and the next steps.

http://www.shepway.gov.uk/moderngov/mgAi.aspx?ID=11129

The Princes Parade Working Group is meeting  next Tuesday. It is a sub group of cabinet. Unfortunately the public aren’t allowed to attend but you might be interested to read the agenda – particularly the bit about all the papers being collected in at the end.

http://www.shepway.gov.uk/moderngov/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=455&MId=4453

Today’s Express is running a story about the financial (non) viability of the proposed Princes Parade project. The council have said that all the issues raised are covered in the planning application or will be addressed in the business plan.

Note the “will be”. In other words they have spent £800k so far on this (not including staff time) without having asked themselves the question of whether it makes financial sense.

Clearly this project is not going to deliver a new leisure centre for Hythe.

If you are having technical problems with the consultation portal please report them to the council

If you can’t get the problem resolved and/or you are finding the consultation portal just too complicated then you can email your response to the council .

The email address to use in both cases is: planning.policy@shepway.gov.uk  Subject: PPLP consultation

If you are emailing your response to the consultation start your email “Policy UA18 is NOT sound because…” and then give your reasons. The sort of things you might like to talk about are flood risk; loss of biodiversity/wildlife habitat; harm to the setting of the Royal Military Canal (heritage); loss of open space; loss of visual amenity; the public benefits of the housing/leisure centre do NOT outweigh the harm the development will cause; there are alternative sites for the leisure centre and housing.

Please use your own words and make sure that you get an acknowledgement of your email.