SOME QUESTIONS AND ASSUMPTIONS
As we all know, Shepway District Council is promoting some pretty ambitious plans for what can only be described as highly significant tracts of development within its district boundaries - and if what I hear is true, council representatives will seemingly be off to sunny places in order to pimp those plans.
Proposals include the development of both public open spaces and farm land, as well as re-development of existing buildings and facilities. They involve many things from a new station to the extensive provision of essential medical facilities to serve an incoming population explosion which will be far greater than even the Ashford area’s ‘London Overspill’ expansion of the early sixties.
I’ve recently looked at more of the development concepts surrounding the general harbour and Marine Parade area of Folkestone and am genuinely moved to suggest what an appalling general concept much of this is even in outline, let alone the more detailed projected building designs to come.
In my view, serious questions arise as to the existence of properly joined-up planning generally and I raise the following:-
One is given to understand that the current infrastructure provision for the area is at bursting point – particularly with regard to water and drainage (both surface and foul water). How are these to be augmented?
I suggest that adequate car and coach parking is a critical essential to the town’s economy if we are to encourage visitor numbers - and we are already short of such parking. Therefore if we are to reduce that shortage still further, less vehicle parking must inevitably result in falling visitor numbers. Falling visitor numbers will result in less tourist revenue. So, yet again I ask, where are all the visitor vehicles to the popular harbour area (and elsewhere) to be parked?
The town abuts the sea as its southern boundary and the sea, together with much of the surrounding countryside offers superb visual amenities. Has nobody in the SDC researched the effect which a “New York styled” high block of 220 plus flats had on the eastern section of Dover’s sea front in 1959/60, when the monolithic ‘Gateway’ finally replaced what had previously been known as the ‘Front door to the Town’, thus effectively shutting off much of that towns visual amenities?
Why spend all that money doing up the wonderful Harbour Arm if its attractions are to be minimised by yet more residential accommodation contained within massive and desperately inappropriate structures? Doesn’t the Burstin already fulfil that seeming need?
Surgeries are closing in Folkestone through lack of qualified medical staff to serve them and there is a nationwide shortage of qualified doctors, nurses and paramedics. Extensive proposed residential development will generate unprecedented demand for medical facilities - particularly so if there is a significant increase in the number of retired residents. Thus, how are any (if indeed, they’re properly planned) new surgeries to be appropriately manned by qualified medical personnel?
Furthermore, and bearing in mind the reduction in East Kent's hospital A&E and other hospital arrangements, what effect are such massive population increases going to have on already over-stretched hospital resources?
There are many other questions which require answers but finally here I ask again, why should further tall residential structures in Marine Parade be allowed to cut off the visual amenities – particularly those of the residents in the elegant Marine Crescent?
It seems that council doors are often kept closed - Why?
With all the aforementioned in mind, my simple brain can only conclude that the long term economic planning aim for the town must be rate-revenue based and not tourist-revenue based . . . . the latter having been an excellent on-going revenue earner which has benefited much local business and others - not just SDC.
A rate-revenue based economy may well benefit the council exchequer if all these thousands of residential units will indeed be sold. However, I suspect it will also eventually serve as a terminal knell to the current and once more growing lucrative tourist trade - and thus also, to any tourist related businesses, including visitor attractions, hotels and boarding houses.
I suggest that some of these questions are perhaps what we should all be asking at the moment . . . . . . and we should all relentlessly keep on asking . . . until such time as full and satisfactory answers are received.
Whether Central or Local, it’s all to do with that wonderful thing called ‘Open Government’ and we should be satisfied with nothing less, particularly if we are to kill off seemingly on-going local rumours of ‘brown paper envelopes’.
Just for once, I'm actually glad of my age, for I don’t reckon I shall be around to witness what I sense will be a development rape of what’s left of this historic town with its lovely harbour and surrounding countryside.