Empty Promises

A reader has emailed me a link to the above video on YouTube. It was shot at one of those public sector renewal love-ins at the Margate Media Centre last week.

The subject under discussion is crap housing, and in particular the No Use Empty scheme. No Use Empty is, as you know, an East Kent initiative backed by KCC and Thanet Council. Its aim is to bring 6,000 empty and derelict properties (otherwise known as 'eyesores'), back into use by persuading landlords, and bribing them with grants, to do up their shitholes instead of leaving them and the surrounding area to go down the khazi, in the greedy expectation of profit tomorrow without spending a penny today.

A worthy cause you might say. But let me just save you nine minutes or so and summarise the video for you.

Audience member: What control do you have over the many asbentee private landlords in the area?

Speaker (Head of Community Planning KCC): I'm not making excuses, but the best person to ask isn't here.

Audience member: I run the new B&B in Hawley Square and in the last few weeks we've had five couples from out of the area, looking for family homes here, stay with us. The estate agents have told them there are no large houses to buy, it's mostly small units, the houses have been divided up.

Then we have the No Use Empty scheme... many of those projects are still standing empty and are touted as a success after they've only had a first wave renovation. These very small, one bed flats in these large historic buildings which would have been appealing to the people we actually want to attract to give a more balanced, settled community are then added to the other 880 empty properties that you've got. So you're actually losing some of the key buildings that would have been attractive to incomers... that would rebalance the social imbalance that's been created over the past 30 years.

Who's actually checking that these buildings... are now occupied and why are you turning beautiful buildings into more substandard bedsits and flats? When we renovated our listed building and took away ten bedsits we got nothing... and yet property developers are able to get money to renovate buildings and not occupy them, and they're still standing derelict. And that's KCC money.

Speaker (Head of Community Planning KCC): That is... is exactly the key issue here, but rather than give an answer blah 880 empty properties, that's a potential for investment blah.

Audience member: One of the problems is that we never know who to talk to... nobody knows who's in charge. Will you support a directorate that would bring everything together in one place in Thanet?

Chair: Colin is only a (council) officer, he doesn't need to answer that one.

It's enough to make you weep, isn't it?

Update: Arse! The video has been removed from YouTube by whoever uploaded it. Must have been embarrassed by the glaring spotlight of my publicity!

Update update: Er, it's back again now.

Click here to go to No Use Empty website
Click here to go to Margate Renewal Partnership website

Time Running Out For Margate Traders

At last! Serious and objective reporting about the dire state of Margate! Yep, it took intrepid, investigative reporter Rolf Harris to get to the bottom of things - Margate's dying on its arse. On his Made in England art show on BBC1 last night, the Aussie ocker said the town looked 'mostly shut' and one young Margatonian he interviewed commented: 'It looks like a shanty town.'

But believe it or not the worst is yet to come. Word has reached the old Eastcliff lugholes that no fewer than six retail outlets in and around the Old Town and Lower High Street area have pulled the plug or are planning to, citing the shambles that's being made of road works over there as the final nail in the plywood coffin. Work to widen the pavements in the Lower High Street was apparently completed at one stage, only for the road to be dug up again a week later. A further consequence is that the car parks now appear to be closed during shopping hours, and some poor souls who've braved the trip and parked up early have subsequently found their vehicles shut in for the day. What a bloomin' performance!

Meanwhile the upcoming Margate Rocks arts festival has had to be subsidised to the tune of £10,000 I hear, as no organisation in its right mind could be found to sponsor it, leading indirectly to the cancellation of the popular, environmental and locally-based Sea Art project. And talking of subsidies, how do you think the Turner Contemporary Project Space (the old M&S to you and me) has been drawing, er, sell-out crowds of 153 visitors a day? Yes, you guessed it, by bussing art lovers down from Medway - for free!

Update: My spies tell me that at TDC's annual staff meeting this afternoon at Margate's Mike and Bernie Winter Gardens, Tory leader Sandy Beach kicked off proceedings with the good news that Thanet is 'totally different' from four years ago (quite!) and that he only had to walk around the Old Town to feel 'very proud of the work that's been done down there'. The strategic aim is, apparently, 'to have the best seaside towns in England by 2020.' And John Bunnett, Acting Chief Executive, described the operation of Margate Library Thanet Gateway Plus as 'absolutely superb!' Hmm.

Child's Play

Yet more news from the north side. My spies have spotted a group of school children conducting interviews in Margate under the auspices of the Margate Town Partnership. Apparently they've been tasked with writing essays about the future of the town, which will no doubt resurface at some point as detailed (and presumably free) 'research'.

Interestingly they've been warned of a couple of 'no go' areas. No mention of retail being converted into residential, and no mention of other boroughs shipping their unfortunates to the seaside.

Speaking of retail being converted to residential, whatever happened to the questions that were going to be asked about public money being used to tart up the Outfitters Gallery, which went on the market recently for £415,000? I see on the Lovetts website that the price has now dropped to £399,950. Perhaps the owners have decided to offer a 'controversy discount'?

Knees Up

Margatonians are holding a bit of a shindig tonight to celebrate the arrival of later opening hours for the season. Fireworks, a band, and all courtesy of Margate Town Partnership. So be in the piazza (that's The Parade in old money) or be, erm, somewhere else.

Actually there's not been a lot of publicity for this, they couldn't even be bothered to flag it on their new website, so heaven knows whether anyone will actually turn up. Still, nobody can say I don't do my bit for the Arsonists.