Royal Sands Development on the Pleasurama site in Ramsgate again.

As pretty much everyone in Ramsgate must be aware, progress on the development is still moving at snails pace. The heath and safety notice on the site is a two year one for 200 workers that expires in March, so my calculation that if it takes 200 workers 2 years to build it the four workers on site will probably take 100 years to complete it I think is still a valid one.

So far we have had about fourteen years with this prime council owned leisure site a hideous mess that blights the town, so I periodically tackle the council about it. This is usually a very long and drawn out business and I would imagine it will be about a month before I receive any reply at all.

Last time I did this was in March and I published the replies I got in august see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2011/08/royal-sands-development-on-pleasurama.html trying to have a conversation with someone that takes months to reply is a very tedious business, but I am starting the process again. The August replies were not very encouraging.

1.    No records are held of changes to the development agreement on this issue.

1a.    No records of a revised programme are held.

1b.    No records of a public information programme are held.

2.    No material alterations to the approved scheme have been proposed or         approved.

3.    Following the refurbishment work undertaken in 2008 and 2009 a programme     of inspections will commence in October this year. The future programme will be developed following these inspections and until these are carried out the     information that you have requested is not held.

Well you can follow the link to the previous post about the issue if you are getting a bit lost. What I think the council are saying is that have lost all control over their management of this prime site that they are supposed to be administering on our behalf.

It is very difficult to work out what the developer is doing, the development agreement with the council states that he should have finished the pile boring process by the beginning or this year and that by now he should have pretty much completed the steel cage.

This would have been a labour intensive task, creating employment and hopefully a strong structure anchored to the bedrock some three or four metres below the site. What has happened instead is that between two and four workers on site have dug a series of holes about a metre deep and fill these with concrete leaving thin reinforced concrete posts about 3 metres high sticking up out of the ground.

Obviously I have asked the council’s building control department what they think of this, as the building isn’t anchored to the ground as the original project was supposed to be and these thin concrete posts are appearing instead of the steel cage that was expected.

The answer goes something like, we thought that the council’s building control were going to be in charge of this and that we would have considerable control over the construction and the approval of detailed construction buildings, however the developer has used a private firm licensed to oversee building control, so we can’t really say anything. What they have to say off the record, well is off the record, you can always ring them up and have a chat with them.

I suppose the think I find most worrying is that we now have a large development starting on a high risk flood zone, sitting on the old beach that was laid down by the sea instead of one anchored firmly in the solid chalk below it. However all of this is being carries out within the regulations as they stand at the moment.

The failure to comply with the time structure set out in the development agreement with the council is a different matter altogether and I find the fact that the council have made no effort to find out why the developer is so far behind very concerning.

The development now has a website where you can tell which apartment have been reserved, see http://www.royalsandsramsgate.co.uk/availability.asp the server is a bit slow and you have click on a bout 20 links to find out, I think it is about 8 out of 109.

The other big potential hazard to this development is its proximity to the 70 foot high unsupported chalk cliff. The condition of the concrete cliff façade being the most visible problem. This is essentially split into three parts. The brick bit at the Broadstairs end of the site that was built in 1860 and partially collapsed in the 1960s. the arched concrete bit in the middle that was built in the 1930s and seems to be sound and reasonably well built. The bit at the harbour end of the site that has several cracks in it and weed growing on it. So far the developer has only done work in front of the sound looking arched bit in the middle. 


So with this rather mixed bag I have to work out what to ask the council, this is a tricky one as it may be a considerable time before I get a reply. This isn’t made any easier because of the problems I pointed out to the leader and chief executive of the council the other day. By this I mean that the officer in charge of this development, head of major developments has gone, and the officer in charge of building control has also gone.  

Here are the pictures from the compact camera’s card where I got the picture of the site taken today http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/1011/id3.htm a bit of a mixed bag. 


Also in all of this there is what I want to achieve, part of certainly the part of me that is in business in this part of Ramsgate would just like them to get on with the thing in the time frame the promised, well this obviously isn’t happening and isn’t likely to. Another part of me is concerned about the safety aspects of the development, particularly the storm damage and the cliff stability problems.  


I would appreciate it if anyone has any ideas on what to ask the council about the development, they would either post them as a comment or email me.  

The Royal Sands website http://www.royalsandsramsgate.co.uk/about.asp says: “The Developers for the Royal Sands development are SFP Ventures (UK) Ltd a UK based Commercial and Residential Development Company with experience in mixed schemes in both the UK and overseas.”

I have trawled the internet made a companies house search and yet can find nothing to suggest that they have ever developed anything, even a garden shed.

So if anyone knows of anything they have actually either developed or failed to develop it would be a useful indicator of what we have to expect in Ramsgate.

I will carry on with this post as I get time. 

Foundations Found at Royal Sands Ramsgate Pleasurama. An Apology and Thanks from Me

It’s all too easy to publish to the internet, unless Conroy Maddox has been using your keyboard as I am sure all of the art lovers who attended the Turner Contemporary will understand.

Many thanks to the contractor Cardy Construction for chipping the chalk off of one of the foundations to a support pillar, that is part of the concrete structure of the arches, part of the Pleasurama cliff façade and sending me a picture.

I genuinely think that it is safe to walk on the cliff top footpath now, something I will be doing again.

Here is the picture and this is what they have to say about it.

“Dear Michael

As recently discussed please find the attached photograph of the exposed column foundation.  The location of concrete highlighted in red extending below the excavation level passed the dotted line would indicate the foundations are built as described within the historic drawings.  It would appear that the concrete was originally cast against chalk and not shuttered therefore causing the surface of the concrete to appear uneven.  We have washed the concrete off as much as possible and driven steel rods into the foundation which appears to be of sound construction.

Regards,
Michael”

This, like so many historical engineering puzzles, has a solution that probably involves practices that wouldn’t occur today.

What happened in this case was that having cut a slot about three feet wide and about three feet deep, going up the seventy foot high bare chalk cliff above, they got some poor chap to get in the bottom of the slot and dig a hole eight and a half feet deep in solid chalk.

I think this picture (I have put coloured lines on the original 1930s plan and sorry about the drawing of the bloke, my children are better at using MS Paint) explains what this is about.

Viewed from the side on.

The red line is the outline of the concrete pillar.

The green line the original line of the ground before the contractor dug out the ground next to the cliff about a fortnight ago.

The brown line about where they have dug the ground down to now.

The blue bit shows where the concrete block walls between the arches are.

Having solved one problem that is a mixture of industrial archaeology and civil engineering, like so many other things in life that leaves us with another problem and more questions.

Can anyone think of a way that they could have got the foundations in for the infill walls between the arches? The most they could be are nine inches thick, I think, not room enough for a man to get inside.

You can see from on the right hand side of Cardy’s photo that the virgin chalk seems to go right up to the bottom of the block wall.

Are there any foundations under the concrete block infills? If there are, do they extend down as far as the contractor has dug down? Are the concrete block infills tied to the pillars either side? In the simplest terms, is there a danger of block infill walls falling on the people working on the building site next to them?

I don’t know how far down you can dig a nine inch wide foundation trench in solid chalk with a shovel, but would doubt it is as far as the chalk has been dug down next to bottom of the block wall.

The pictures should all expand if you click on them.

Royal Sands Development, Pleasurama Site Ramsgate Cliff Safety Response From Thanet District Council.

I have received a response from the council which they have asked me to publish on this blog relating to my concerns about the foundations that support the cliff façade, the base of which has recently been partly exposed by the contractor.

I have also received a response from the contractor via Laura Sandys MP, who is the MP for this constituency.

First an explanation for anyone who either hasn’t been following this issue or hasn’t understood it properly.    

The two pictures above show the bottom of the concrete cliff façade support pillar marked with red dots and what appears to be virgin (undug) chalk below it. 


The picture should get bigger if you click on it and even bigger if you click on it again. 

This picture shows you where this is and I have drawn a red line around the area shown in the two first pictures.  

This is a detail from the original design plans for the pillar supplied to me under foi legislation from the HSE, it is a side on view of the pillar.

I have added coloured lines to it to help explain what is where. The red line shows where the front of the pillar should be. The green line the ground level before the contractor started excavating. The blue line is roughly where I think they have dug down to. The purple line roughly where the virgin chalk has been cut back to.

As I can’t work out how the foundation was put beneath the virgin chalk, without digging it up and the front of the pillar doesn’t follow the line shown in the design drawing I have concerns about the integrity of this structure.

I discovered this situation last Saturday and asked Kent Fire and Rescue if they would examine it and close the footpath above it while more detailed investigations were made.

Kent Fire and Rescue investigated the area, confirmed that they couldn’t find and sign of foundations but told me that as the council had told them that the cliff was safe, they were not able to close the footpath.

Below is the response I have received by email from the council’s engineer Mike Humber signed by the council’s Director of Regeneration services Brian White which they have asked me to publish here.   

"REGENERATION SERVICES

Michael.child@aol.com

15 April 2011

Our ref: BJW/BH

Your ref:

Dear Mr. Child

‘PLEASURAMA’ CLIFFSIDE, RAMSGATE

I am writing in response to your interest regarding the cliff wall to the rear of the Royal Sands

(formerly ‘Pleasurama’ site at Ramsgate. Your concern being that the cliff wall has no proper

foundations, and is therefore at risk. A site visit was made on Monday 11 April by Mr. Mike Humber,

the Council’s Engineer and myself. The ground has been excavated adjacent to the cliff wall in

recent weeks to enable work on the foundations to the Royal Sands development to proceed.

Consequently chalk is visible in places at a level beneath the cliff wall façade, and this has led you to

believe that there may be no foundations supporting the cliff wall itself.

However the point that you have missed on your inspections is that there are substantial concrete

foundations, to a minimum depth of two metres, beneath each of the main supporting columns to the

cliff wall. This was verified during our site inspection.

Records exist of the design of the original cliff wall dating from the early part of the 20th century in the

form of a construction drawing and I believe you already have a copy of this. The observations made

on site this week confirm that the foundation provision appears to be as described on the drawing. It

can be seen that the foundations and columns were both cast insitu with the columns exhibiting a

regular finish from timber formwork whilst the foundations were cast against the hand excavated face

of bare virgin chalk. I suggest that it is this interface between these two very different concrete

finishes that you have misinterpreted as the base of the concrete structure. Although recessed a

little, the foundation does continue well below this elevation as confirmed above.

I do trust that this letter draws your concern to a satisfactory conclusion. Thank you for your interest

in the subject. Perhaps you might post a copy of this letter on your blog.

Whilst writing, because of your interest also in the engineering history of Ramsgate Harbour I thought

I would draw your attention to the pending completion of a new floating concrete breakwater in the

Outer Harbour area. This is the single biggest investment the Council has made in the Harbour for

some 20 or so years. The new floating breakwater will not only protect the Eastern Marina, it will also

provide satisfactory berthing for work boats used in the construction and ongoing operation of the

London Array offshore windfarm. The Council is very pleased with the new structure, a large portion

of the funding was provided through European Union grant.

Yours sincerely

B White

Director of Regeneration Services

Email: brian.white@thanet.gov.uk

Tel: 01843 577007

cc. Cheryl Pendry

Mike Humber"

Below is my response to them 

"Dear Brian and Mike.

I have to admit the saga of this cliff wall is a bit of a difficult one, but as the wretched thing doesn’t conform to the design drawings I feel it best to err on the safe side. Most particularly as the previous two problems I reported to the council, the bulging panel and the 1860s balustrade both resulted in council action to repair the problem.

God alone knows how that 1860s balustrade is supposed to work, if it has foundations and how much water is getting in from behind. Did you know that when the railway extension from Herne Bay to Ramsgate was put in, in the 1860s the government inspector, Captain Rich condemned much of the civil engineering work including several of the bridges, which had to be rebuilt?

I am still concerned that I haven’t got any evidence that there is sound concrete all the way between the bottom of the visible concrete pier and the rough cast concrete that you have discovered at the at the bottom of the recent excavation.

Have you either exposed continuous concrete between the bottom of the pier and the bottom of the excavation, carried out a driven rod or bore test this in this area?

The reason I ask this is that the chalk at the bottom of the pillar doesn’t have the appearance of made ground and I can’t see how the back of a load spreading foundation or the bottom of the pillar could have been constructed without disturbing the chalk.

As we have discussed before the façade isn’t a load bearing structure and I am particularly concerned that heavy vehicles are accessing the cliff edge while below excavations are being made of foundations that don’t conform to exactly the design drawings i.e a uniformly cast liner pillar extending down to the foundations.

After the arched part of the façade (visibly the most sound and professionally constructed part) the contractor will presumably excavate in front the less linier portal part of the façade where both the pinning took place and the contractor has already discovered and documented one pillar with inadequate foundations sitting on made ground.

In short the risks of a normal building site appear to have been adequately addressed apart from the added problem of the proximity of the public footpath to the edge of the cliff.

I am not asking that this be permanently closed while the building work is in progress, something would I think be unnecessary and damaging to the town’s economy.

Just that the parts above excavation of any part of the base of the façade that doesn’t conform precisely to the design drawings is closed while investigations are made and of course some emergency signage warning people not to drive anywhere near the cliff edge.

Best regards Michael"

I have also had a response from Laura Sandys informing me that the contractor, Cardy Construction will “further expose a section of the foundation and provide Michael with photographic evidence of the existing foundation,”


I have added a link to a series of linked webpages showing some of the various technical reports on the cliff façade structure http://www.thanetonline.com/cliff 

Sunday Ramble, reflections on why the council would risk people’s lives, some pictures and so on

Cliff

I think it is fair to say that the cliff façade behind the Pleasurama site where they have started building The Royal Sands development in Ramsgate is a dangerous structure. I don’t think I will sleep too well until they have cordoned off the part of the cliff top path above where the foundations of the cliff wall have been undermined.

I will contact the HSE on Monday, as they sent me pictures of the foundations that don’t exist only last week, I expect them to act pretty promptly. I haven’t contacted the media yet, something that is all a bit tedious if anyone else wants to, please do.

I suppose the next problem will be where does the money come from to make the cliff safe, I would think this will be in the order of tens of millions. Unfortunately Thanet District Council have gone down a road where all of the responsibility for the cliff façade structure is theirs.

I don’t think there is an easy way back to just having a cliff of the normal, don’t sit under it standard of most of the Thanet cliffs, I don’t know if they will be able to underpin it now so much chalk has been removed, as I think it would be difficult to protect the workers doing the underpinning.

Having been down at the bottom of the cliff there yesterday I can assure you it is not a pleasant experience.

At the moment the only people who have responded to me are in agreement that there are no foundations where there should be foundations and that includes Kent Fire and Rescue who say that they don’t have the power to close the footpath until the council’s engineer says that a concrete cliff façade weighing thousands of tons that has no foundation is a dangerous structure. This I presume is the same engineer that ignored my concerns about the lack of foundations when the £1m contract started and went on to sign the contract off.

If you don’t understand what I am talking about there see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2011/04/pleasurama-royal-sands-development_09.html

Pictures

Here are the links to the pages of pictures that I took today

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/netbok411/id5.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/netbok411/id6.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/netbok411/id7.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/netbok411/id8.htm

China Gateway

Here is the link to the China Gateway website http://www.cgiplc.com/  this company used to be Commercial Group Properties the link on their website to “Real Time Stocks” their share price doesn’t work. Their shares are at 10.25p at the time of writing, a long way from the price when the first started trading and bought a lot of land at Manston.

I think that the main problem they face at the moment is the environmental constraints related to the Manston site, most particularly the drainage, from what I can understand of the new documents that appeared on the councils planning website http://www.ukplanning.com/thanet  planning reference F/TH/08/0400 they have just made a start on this.

There is some information about the Manston environmental constraints here http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/drink/id13.htm  with the problem of Pfizer right on our doorstep, taking Greenfield sites and converting them to industrial sites without first using the redundant industrial land has pretty obvious disadvantages.

With the elections in the offing I wonder if the china gateway people will once again be offering donations to the political parties and taking the councillors on trips to China. At the moment there isn’t a Tesco carrier bag in site see http://eastcliffrichard.blogspot.com/search/label/%27ello%20me%20old%20china

Thanet District Council’s unfortunate enthusiasms

With China Gateway where the initial assumptions seemed to be that the council would rubber stamp the Chinese companies discharging contaminated water into our drinking water. Pleasurama where the council seem to have been right behind a development built against basic safety advice from the environment agency and seem to have been turning a blind eye to cliff safety. The airport where the council seem to have failed to enforce various environmental regulations for years. I am beginning to wonder what sort of company would want to move to Thanet. It would be nice to think that the council would come down firmly on environmental and safety issues without people pressuring them into doing so.

In Europe now I think most reputable companies would see a quality water supply and safe cliffs and basic environmental standards as the minimum requirement to moving here.



I will ramble on as the mood takes me.

Pleasurama, Royal Sands Development Ramsgate Cliff Safety, Duty and Civil Disobedience

After my communications with the contractor earlier this week there has been some investigation of the cliff façade foundations.

The pictures should all expand if you click on them, looking at this first one taken through the site gate it appeared that not only have they cut back the chalk as far as where the pillar should continue down but have actually undermined the chalk under the pillar.

This was all too much for me, so I went on to the site, you have to appreciate that there were people walking along the cliff top path at the time. I had had assurances that the foundations were there and it certainly looked as though they were not.

 The following pictures were taken close to the pillar that has been undermined.

Here are the rest of today’s pictures from the camera card http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/netbok411/id4.htm I am a bit lost for words at the moment, obviously I have alerted Kent Fire and Rescue’s USAR team.   

Pleasurama Ramsgate Royal Sands Pancake Day update.

A month ago today I made an official request to the council to try and find out what is going on with this development, as the council are supposed to answer these requests within 20 working days, this equates to one month.

Here is what I asked in red.

1 Please send me any addition information about this development that I haven’t requested below, because I am unaware of its existence.

It would appear that some work has occurred on the site during the last month, but obviously this work doesn’t relate to the development agreement schedules and conditions of the various leases contained in it.

2 Does this mean that the leases are now invalid and the development agreement is to be determined?

3 Or does it mean that there has been an updated agreement with new schedules?

If the development is going ahead, either to a new schedule or is being allowed under some other flexible arrangement:

4 Can you please supply me with a revised building schedule?

5 Can you please tell me which of the approved plans the development is to be built to and if these plans are published on the council’s planning website?

6 Can you please send me details of the public information sessions that were promised once work started on the site?

7 Can you please send me any updated information on the cliff safety issue? Details and dates of the promised cliff top weight limit, correspondence between the council, the HSE, the developer, cliff survey and maintenance schedule, any cliff survey reports, any agreements for cliff maintenance between the council and the developer.

8 Can you please send me details of any flood, storm or emergency escapes incorporated in the development as a result of the EA recommendations 8th Feb 2008.

9 If the artists impressions, details of roof material and other building materials for the building to be built, are different to those described on the councils planning website, due to the various different plans and in consequence plans being used that no longer relate to the ancillary details, can you please send me the details of these changes?

10 If the plans that are to be used no longer relate to all of the planning and design statement, can you please send me revisions to the planning and design statement?

Here is the council’s reply in blue.

Thank you for your communication received on 24/02/2011 09:00:09 where you requested information about the Pleasurama or Royal Sands deevelopment.

In response to your questions I can comment as follows:There has been some early slippage in terms of works undertaken to comply with the terms of the development agreement. The construction works are however now starting to claw back time lost earlier in the construction programme and progress is now being made on site. There is no amended agreement with the developers and no action is presently anticipated in relation to determine the development agreement, neither has there been a request for a revised build schedule. I will request a revised programme from the developer who has indicated that he will be aiming to adhere to the programme.

I will also request that the developer establishes a public information programme.No recent amendments have been proposed to the design of the building and no alterations have been made in response to the Environment Agencies correspondence with the developer in 2008. Any amendments would need to be considered through the planning process.

In 2008 and 2009 we received plans to comply with conditions of the planning permission that were approved in January 2009. These proposals did not result in material alterations to the approved building and I recall providing you with those drawings following receipt. I can confirm that no subsequent amendments have been proposed to the building since that time.

In terms of the planning and design statement I consider the scheme still complies with the principles of the original submission.I can confirm that the HSE have considered the cliff survey. In an email to the Council they have confirmed they do not intend to pursue this matter. They have requested that the Council draws up a programme and regime for the future maintenance of the cliff face. This matter is in hand.

The idea here is that the council leases the land to the developer under the condition that he builds the development according to a time schedule laid down by the council.

Back in October 2006 the council and the developer signed this agreement that had been drawn up by the council’s solicitors, here it is http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/pda/id5.htm

This agreement says when each part of the development should have started and when it should have finished.

Obviously this all has to be agreed with the council and is discussed at cabinet and then full council if the cabinet approve the development.

Anyway the developer didn’t fulfil the obligations of the development agreement, didn’t start and finish the various bits of the agreement when they should have done and didn’t come up with the money to protect the council if anything went wrong, the performance bond.

So the council officers put the issue before the cabinet again in 2009, with a recommendation from the head of finance that they should terminate the agreement.

Anyway the cabinet decided that the development should go ahead with a reduced financial guarantee and the council’s solicitors drew up a deed of variation from the terms of the original agreement with a new set of schedules, here it is http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/pda/id17.htm

This says on page 10 that the foundations should have been finished by August last year and that the first bit, the hotel (section A) should have its structural frame going up now.

This means that they should be putting up the framework at the end of the site where the Pavilion and the lift are. When I put in this request nothing had happened in terms of any foundations or construction on the site and between putting in the request and getting the answer today 6 foundations and six building support pillars have been put at the other end of the site.

There have been several newspaper articles about the site

http://www.kentonline.co.uk/kentonline/newsarchive.aspx?articleid=32914

http://www.kentonline.co.uk/kentonline/newsarchive.aspx?articleid=34536
are a couple of examples, over the years they have been signs that there is about to be more council activity and more delays. So last weeks Gazette article saying that the foundations had actually been laid when they obviously haven’t has put me on my guard.

Royal Sands Pleasurama Development, first part definitely going up and early Tombstoning in the Ramsgate Harbour.

A barmy February day in Ramsgate I have just received an assurance from the developer that the columns for the superstructure are going up, so I went to have a look.
As you can see they are, not pile driven as we first thought, not pile bored as we heard later, but poured concrete foundations.

There have been so many sets of plans that I am not entirely certain which they are going to build it to, this looks like the ones that have a very narrow two way road at the back.

This is a detail from this set of plans.

Thanks to one of my readers for adding extra lorries to show the problems manoeuvring right next to the cliff façade support pillars that project out from the cliff.

As the building will be about the same height as the cliff I also see some problems gaining access for cliff maintenance.

There was also one of those "only in Ramsgate" funny scenarios, as you can see from the picture people were jumping into the harbour, and when I turned round after taking the pictures, there were the two inevitable security guards heading up the harbour arm to stop them. Both the security guards were eating ice creams and I am pretty sure that one of them was a chap who not so long ago was jumping of the harbour wall himself.

Here are the rest of the pictures http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/211/id5.htm

Pleasurama Royal Sands Cliff, a conspiracy or a conundrum and other Sunday Rambles.

A long old ramble about Pleasurama first
The cliff behind the Pleasurama site in Ramsgate has become something of a local joke to those of us living in Ramsgate, we all saw the extensive and expensive works to repair it, about £1m of TDC money was expended on these.

After that we all saw the weeds growing out from the cracks between the new paintwork, the weedings the repairs to the repairs, the bits dropping off and at the moment we can all see the rather dodgy looking bits where parts of the bottom of the cliff has been exposed.

Having made various fusses about Pleasurama for years now extending back before this blog see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/tdc/report.htm or even as far back as seven years, see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/seafront/ and more on this blog see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/search/label/Pleasurama%20development

With the cliff safety issues relating to the Pleasurama site I genuinely thought that I had made my point and that the council, The HSE and the developer had taken what I have been saying seriously and had some sort of “make safe the way of the cliff” plan.

Then Simon Moores reacted rather oddly to one of my comments, with a comment on his blog.

“So please no more conspiracy theories of this kind on my weblog if you will and the same with the cliff. You are starting to sound like Rick banging on forever with allegations that the IRA had some loose connection to Thanet councillors” see http://birchington.blogspot.com/2011/02/itson-weblog-so-it-must-be-true.html

That was last Sunday and I thought I ought to check the situation i.e. to make sure that my concerns are being addressed properly. There are all sorts of concerns related to this cliff, most of which are open to doubt and my banging on about them will eventually either show me up to be a bit of a nut, or there will be a cliff collapse there and, what, I will be able to say, I told you so, or something.

One concern that I thought every one agreed with me about, is that there needs to be a weight limit for service vehicles driving along the cliff top footpath, next to the edge of the cliff.

I am not naming names here, I am not Rick and certainly not invulnerable to libel, even if what I am saying is the truth, nor do I want to put people in the awkward position of having their name googled as an exact phrase and coming up associated to something like this, maybe years later, when they are applying for a job or something.

Anyway the senior engineer at the civil engineering consultants that the council use, agrees with me and the council’s own civil engineer agrees with me, that driving heavy vehicles along the edge of the cliff is a bad idea.

If you are an engineer there isn’t much else you can do, you see although the concrete cliff wall looks impressively strong, to people who are not engineers, it doesn’t actually do anything to hold up the cliff and wasn’t designed to do so.

What you are looking at, although you can’t really see this, is an unsupported chalk cliff and I don’t suppose you would drive your car too close to the edge of one of these, were it just grass and chalk.

In fact chalk cliffs from an engineering point of view are generally much stronger than they look and a lot of Thanet roads go within about 2 metres of the edge without much in the way of worries.

It’s the last few feet next the edge that’s best avoided, for something very heavy as I am sure most people can work out for themselves.

The added problems with this particular bit of cliff relate to different things that have happened to it over the years, tunnelling, navel guns mounted there during the world wars, long periods of bad surface maintenance, that sort of thing.

Anyway after Simon’s comment I wondered just how seriously the health and safety people had taken my concerns, so I wrote to them and it seems that the council may have been a little economical with the truth when talking to the HSE about the cliff.

There are several documents that I have relating to the cliff, they were obtained via the freedom of information act, they may seem a bit dull but click on the links if you want to read them.

http://www.thanetonline.com/cliff/

http://www.thanetonline.com/cliff/id3.htm

http://www.thanetonline.com/cliff/id4.htm

are the ones that the I think the council may have forgotten to send the HSE and

http://www.thanetonline.com/cliff/id2.htm

the one they definitely did send the HSE.

I don’t really know what is with the council and Pleasurama, the EA sent them a letter three years ago, saying that they should insist on some basic safety modifications to the deign see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/ea/

The senior council officer, who is to be the new chief executive of the council, advised the cabinet to terminate the development agreement and they ignored her, I don’t think I should publish confidential internal council documents, but do have the documentary evidence supporting this if pushed.

Then all this business about the cliff safety, I don’t think that anyone reading the developer’s contractor’s report http://www.thanetonline.com/cliff/ about the condition of the façade could reasonably disagree with my contention that some sort of further investigation should be made.

Then the business of the recently issued 199 year lease, I haven’t enquired about this one, but do wonder in the light of the Hartsdown application and all the delays over the Maritime Museum lease, why the Pleasurama one didn’t go to consultation, or perhaps it went to a secret public consultation like the leadership one.

I know people probably think that I bang on about this consultation that I consider to have been rigged, but if you are one of them you may ponder for a moment, why it hasn’t appeared on the council’s consultations page, see http://www.thanet.gov.uk/council__democracy/consultation.aspx perhaps they are in a state of denial about this, see no evil who knows.

The trouble is that if I make a complaint about this again, they may think I am being vexatious, as it is they haven’t yet answered the feedback I made about this consultation when it was on.

Anyway back to the dodgy cliff and Pleasurama, the bit that worries me the most is the bit where the drain has blocked at the top of the cliff, this caused a puddle on the footpath, this froze and thawed causing the surface of the footpath to come away, this caused water to get behind the cliff façade, this caused bits of the façade to drop off.

The council say that some of this is wrong I think, I a not quite sure which bits they think are wrong, the last link in this chain of events was when the council put up a barrier at the bottom of the cliff and I thanked the only to get a reply from them, saying that the barrier wasn’t to protect people from being hit by the lumps of cliff that had been falling off.

Obviously there is work going on down on the Pleasurama site at the moment and having joined the church of responsible blogging, I emailed the council’s press department saying that I was going to do a post about Pleasurama, they emailed back saying that there was going to be a meeting about this at the end of last week. So I emailed them back saying I would delay the post until then. I made it very clear that a lot of people including myself would like to know what is going on after all this time.

The current development agreement says that the metal cage that forms the structure of the building should have appeared by now, so with the development agreement having been thrown out the window again, what is going on is anybody’s guess.

As yet I haven’t heard from the council, so this is a sort of partial post.

A look at some of the other Thanet blogs over the last week.

I will start with the one that I publish but don’t write http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/ this is where I publish press releases that people send me and new council documents, frankly it isn’t a very popular blog, only about a third of the number of people that read this one, read it. Quite a lot of blogs don’t even have links to it, including Bignews Margate that links to the other main Thanet blogs.

Pageviews today 147 Pageviews yesterday 180 Pageviews last month 5,431 is what the stats say for this blog but two recent posts there have been getting some comment.

One has the emotive title GO-AHEAD GIVEN FOR TREE MASSACRE see http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/2011/02/go-ahead-given-for-tree-massacre.html I have to admit to being a bit unclear about this one and have been reading the comments with interest.

The other is http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/2011/02/employees-and-contractors-from-pfizer.html?showComment=1297692530692#c3615986546683633728 about the Pfizer closure.

Starting at the top of my sidebar today Thanet Life http://birchington.blogspot.com/ the latest post http://birchington.blogspot.com/2011/02/no-right-turn.html has video of a pilot’s eye view of the approach to the Runway at Manston over Ramsgate.

As Simon points out there really isn’t an alternative to overflying Ramsgate when landing and taking off in this direction.

Manston expansion is one of those strange Thanet mysteries that seem a bit odd given the economic climate, the latest episode being the Parkway railway station, despite government being Conservative all the way up and a promised reign of common sense it would seem that despite the desperate need for money to sort some of Thanet’s problems, the only big lump of future government money seems to be for this station.

If comment is anything to go by Simon’s post last Sunday http://birchington.blogspot.com/2011/02/when-whistle-blows.html was very popular and is about the Margate Football Club plans at Hartsdown Park.

Next Ken Read’s blog http://in2thanet.blogspot.com/ with an informative post on the development of Ramsgate Harbour http://in2thanet.blogspot.com/2011/02/wind-in-our-sails.html

Next to one of the local news pros Isle of Thanet Gazette's Saul Leese who started his own YouTube channel yesterday, see http://www.youtube.com/user/mindbloggles this is called Mind Boggles.

I tuned in, waited for mind to boggle, and, yes, it boggled.

Publishing 6 vids to YouTube since yesterday suggests that Saul may have gone critical.

I have just returned after taking the children to Morelli's in Broadstairs for an ice cream and notice that Simon has put up a very encouraging post about the undercliff in Westgate, it really does sound like some sort of cooperation between residents and the council, see http://birchington.blogspot.com/2011/02/big-society-at-its-best.html

I also notice that Simon is getting the same problem when you try to expand some of his pictures by clicking on them if you are using Internet Explorer, you get a virus warning instead of a bigger picture.

I think someone must have reported Blogger to Microsoft as being a malicious website. A bit like those spam emails saying you have a malicious file in your computer, they give you instructions to delete it, the only problem being that the file you delete is vital to the running of your computer.

Tony Bignews Margate had a post with a lot of comment on it last week, see http://bignewsmargate.blogspot.com/2011/02/boring-biased-and-conservative-bbc-in.html even quick comments from Cllr Chris Wells. `What is it you want to ask, Tony? Reminded me of an oft parodied or plagiarised thing in literature that I am not sure of its origins, you know the one where the computer asks the questions.

I will endeavour to ramble on as the day progresses.

Work Starts on the Royal Sands Development Ramsgate at the Pleasurama site again.

After the work to clear the site of piles of dirt and rubbish that stopped at the beginning of October the same week as a lump of masonry fell off of the cliff façade, leaving a small mountain of dirt, work has started again.

This time it is to investigate the pipes and electrical wires on the site prior to piling, obviously this is necessary as they wouldn’t want bore a pile through the main sewer or an electrical cable.

Apparently the plan is to start pile boring in December, this isn’t official information but just comes from asking the chaps working on the site what they are up to.

Speculation about this project is a difficult one, perhaps a crystal ball would be more appropriate than asking the council.

Royal Sands Development Ramsgate Pleasurama Where Now?

I am asking for a bit of help from the people who read this blog, not a for or against just some ideas as once again I am one again going to try to get some temporary summer use for the building site next summer and some sort of resolution to the ongoing problem.

This will be a fairly long post as for the most part I am clarifying my thoughts by writing them down.

With the temporary use I have tried this every year for last few years and once we did get a leisure use for the site throughout the summer.

All of the other years the answer from the council has been that the development is to start imminently and that the developer would need all of the site so any other use would be impossible.

No work has ever started on the site and not a single part of the foundations have been laid.

I suppose the best solution to the overall problem would be if the planning application approval was withdrawn, this would give all of the parties involved a chance to come up with some scheme for the site that is viable.

The problem there is that the road layout and surface drainage pipe, both of which are outside of the site, form part of the approved planning application, because of the work on these the council’s planning department tell me that technically work has started on the development.

Normally if no work had been started then the planning consent would have expired by now but because of this technicality the approval remains valid forever.

Another road to go down would be to say that as the developer is behind schedule in terms of the development agreement between the developer and the council.

This would if it went through all of the various stages exclude the current developer, SFP, but there are problems related to this course of action.

One is that the planning approval would still remain valid. Another is that the developer could engage in litigation against the council to recover the money that they have already spent on the road, surface drain and planning, I think this is the best part of £3m, money the council hasn’t got.

Now my guess is that the current development agreement would be very difficult to apply in this economic climate, mainly because the first part of the development it stipulates that what should be built is the hotel, something that wouldn’t be likely to sell easily at the moment. Another problem is that the hotel is at the western end of the site and all of the construction vehicles would have to pass the hotel until the development is complete.

Since the plans were first approved various issues have come up that makes the development both less viable and less attractive.

The first was the height issue.

The first set of plans were for a building that was too high relative to cliff behind it, in fact height has dogged this development from the early stages.

There is only so much space between the high tide level in front of the building and the cliff behind it.

Various modifications have been made to the plans to try and fit the building into this space, with out changing the basic design so much that the changes invalidated the planning approval.

The net result of this was to remove the gull wing effect of the building depriving it of any architectural merit.

Since the plans were approved the area has been designated a high risk flood zone, this means that the plans would have to satisfy more stringent rules if they were to be approved today.

Another problem is the situation with the cliff behind the development has changed too since the plans were approved.

The council had the cliff surveyed and the survey said that the condition of the cliff wasn’t good.

Since the survey the council has spent various sums of money totalling about £1m on the cliff behind the site and it looks as though cliff maintenance there is going to ongoing, expensive for the council but more significantly will need more space between the cliff and the building, to work on the cliff, than the plans allow for.

Another problem is the road access to the site, the plans and road layout at the moment are reliant on busses being able to use the Victorian viaduct running down the face of the cliff to access the building, for the life of the building.

At best this would mean considerable expense for the council during the life of the building maintaining this structure and at worse the viaduct could become too unsafe for road traffic during the life of the building.

Another problem is the capacity of sewage system in this part of Ramsgate, this is the one that regularly causes flooding in Harbour Parade and would seem unlikely to be able to cope with a large development’s waste.

All in all the council passed plans that at best will be very costly for the council if implemented and at worse will produce a development that is partly or wholly unusable for part of its expected life.

In the long term I think the best solution would be a different development, both higher in terms of the flood risk, further from the cliff to allow better access and designed so that it would work with road access that wasn’t reliant on the viaduct.

At the moment only one of these factors seems to have affected the progress of the development and that is the condition of the cliff behind the development.

So far the council’s stance has been that there is nothing serious wrong with the cliff, as the council owns the cliff and is responsible for maintaining it, this puts the council in a position of considerable financial liability throughout the life of the development.

On the face of it the developer can play this situation to his advantage, using the condition of the cliff as an excuse for not starting the development as he is supposed to have done to conform to the development agreement.

I think this is what happened at the beginning of this year when he examined a small part of the cliff façade.

You may remember that at the end of last year I made a visual examination of the cliff façade and pointed out defects some of which the council repaired.

After this the developer’s contractor investigated some of the defects that the council hadn’t repaired, this was a bit of a strange investigation because it was only of a small part of the potential defects.

They did two things that I could see. One was to investigate some of the other panels like the one the council had to replace, from what I could see this showed that some of the panels that they investigated were faulty (either too thin or not properly constructed). My conclusion here is the it would have been easier and cheaper to replace these panels before the development was built, making access much more difficult and causing disruption to the people living in the development. Something that totally mystifies me though is that finding some defective panels they didn’t investigate the rest of them.

The other thing was to do with the foundations of the support columns. When I made my visual inspection it appeared that the foundations couldn’t have been constructed to the design on the plans of the façade that the council had supplied me with. So either the foundations were different or the simply didn’t exist. What the developer’s contractor did was to dig beside the first of these support columns to see what was underneath it, the result of this was that they found no foundations at all, just muddy earth, there can be no doubt about this I went on site and examined the hole they had dug and photographed it. This leaves me with the question why didn’t they examine the foundations of any more of the support columns?

You have to appreciate that this isn’t a case of some minor construction sitting on no foundations, but a seventy foot high concrete construction, four meters away from where the contractor intends to build an hotel.

Whatever the situation work on the development’s foundations didn’t start at the beginning of this year like it was supposed to.

What did happen this year was that a subcontractor laid the surface water drainage pipe between the site and the harbour.

Finally during September the contractor started to clear the site and I was assured that the development was going to start. This work lasted for about three weeks and involved two men and a digger. This work stopped before the site was completely cleared at about the same time as part of the render fell off of the cliff façade, I am not really certain if the two things were related.

Now having said all of this which is I know a bit negative, the main contractor, Cardy Construction, are a local firm, employing local labour, they also have a good track record.

Now if I push the council to terminate the development agreement, the plans remain valid and we could get a much worse developer.

I will definitely push for temporary use of the site for next year, although I don’t hold out much hope.

I will definitely continue to push for a survey of the cliff, this is a bit of a difficult one as the civil engineering firm that the council normally uses for this sort of work are the same firm that supervised the main cliff repair job and the same firm that assured me in writing that thick concrete foundations resting on solid chalk exist, where there is in fact just muddy soil.

I will defiantly continue to push for a proper flood risk assessment before any building work starts.

Both of these things should be sensible measures that can only save both the council and the developer future problems.

What I am asking for here though is any suggestions of any other actions I could take over this matter.