Plans for Herne Bay hovercraft rides are rejected by council

Plans to introduce hovercraft rides from Herne Bay's seafront have been sunk by council officials. Officers decided the adrenalin-pumping experience would not fit in and dismissed the proposals as "inappropriate".

But bosses have agreed for kayaks to be rented from the beach near Lane End and are in talks with a potential operator. Canterbury City Council's outdoor leisure manager Richard Griffiths said:

"We were approached with an idea for a hovercraft concession but we said no because it was felt it was not appropriate for the town. But the kayak concession could start from April 2013."

The scheme is part of a host of new attractions planned for the seafront, including refreshments at the Hampton play area, deckchairs and toddler swings at Central Parade near the children's amusements and more telescopes along the seafront to allow people to see passing ships and other activity off the coast.

But plans for military-style fitness sessions at the Downs led to battle lines being drawn up between campaigner Phil Rose, of the Friends of the Downs, and council bosses.

At a meeting of Herne Bay Area Members Panel on Tuesday, he raised concerns that agreement had already been given for the circuits, to be run by British Military Fitness from January, with no consultation. Mr Rose, of Beacon Hill, said:

"I am involved with the Friends of the Downs and I am not aware of this. There has been no contact at all. It says something about the nature of the relationship between the council and community groups – we should have been involved."

Mr Griffiths told councillors the scheme had his full support. He said:

"The Downs is a well-used area and I don't see any problems with this."

He said existing concessions, such as the ice cream cart at Spa Esplanade and marketing booth for Bay Blast boat trips, would continue along with the refreshments in the park.

Tory member Peter Lee, of the council's ruling executive committee and the Herne Bay regeneration group which also discussed the plans, said it was a win-win situation for the town.

Herne Bay Times

QE2 Coastal Park Consultation

This is where you get to have your say about the future of our town's greatest natural asset - its coastline. Here's the link to the consultation documents:

http://www.canterbury.gov.uk/main.cfm?objectid=6439

The important bits are the plan itself:

Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Field, Herne Bay's Coastal Park Management Plan

and the various action plans:

• A welcoming place
• Healthy, safe and secure
• Landscape management
• Improving the fabric of the seafront
• Community delivery
• Accreditation

Comments on management plan, maps and action plans are welcome by 30th November 2012 please email rosemary.selling@canterbury.gov.uk

This is also your chance to say what you think should be done about the Victorian Shelter. And the rest of Herne Bay's seafront, come to that.

If you don't tell them, they'll never know.

Singing the praises of our unsung heroes

Unsung heroes from the district have been presented with a Lord Mayor's Award in recognition of their efforts to help other people.

The annual Lord Mayor's Award scheme is now in its 14th year and honours people who go the extra mile to help others. They are nominated by members of the public, and the final judging is made by a cross-party panel of councillors. This year’s awards also feature a special Diamond Jubilee Award in the year of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. The winners and extracts from their citations are: 

• Peter Woolgar, of Northwood Road, Whitstable, wins the Diamond Jubilee Award. Peter is nominated for his lifetime of work in the Scout movement over more than 40 years. His nominator says: “Being a member of the Scouts under Peter’s leadership is one of my most treasured memories and I learned so much from him, lessons I took with me into adulthood. Peter has given of himself selflessly, devotedly and totally to the safe passage of children into adult life.”
• Eleanor (Elle) Caldon, of Field Avenue, Canterbury. Elle is the founder and director of the Mustard Seed Singers, which was formed in 2007 and consists of people experiencing mental illness, their carers and supporters. Her nominator says: “Elle’s strong commitment and inspiring leadership has lifted the confidence of the group and she has played a pivotal role in promoting mental wellbeing through singing.”
• Colleen Ashwin-Kean of Central Parade, Herne Bay. Colleen has been part of the Herne Bay in Bloom Committee for seven years, taking on the role of secretary since her retirement. Last year, the town won a Gold Award. Her nominator says: “Everything Colleen does is in her own time and without payment. Her reward is seeing the district she lives in being the best it can be.”
• Patricia (Pat) Cook, of Windsor Road, Canterbury. Pat is a dedicated youth worker in the Thanington area, organising community events and visiting older or sick people to help with shopping or taking them to medical appointments. She also buys prizes for activities out of her own money. Her nominator says: “Pat is the kindest person I know. She would (and does) do anything for anyone.”

All four winners received their awards from the Lord Mayor of Canterbury, Cllr Robert Waters, at a meeting of the full council at the Guildhall in Canterbury last night (Thursday 27 September).

CCC website

Portrait Bench at Reculver

In spring 2013, a Portrait Bench will be installed along the clifftop between Reculver and Bishopstone - and Canterbury City Council need your help to decide who it will feature!

A Portrait Bench is a collection of three distinctive, lifesize local figures cut from sheet steel and installed alongside a simple bench, inviting people to join the group and become part of the 'portrait'. Here's an example of one from elsewhere in the country:

The figures are inspired and chosen for their individual contribution to the life of the community and reflect the local heritage, culture and aspirations of the area. Their features are simplified but retain their essential characteristics.

Funding for the Portrait Bench is coming from the national sustainable charity Sustrans. The city council is organising the project locally and paying for it to be installed.

The Reculver Portrait Bench

The bench at Reculver is being provided as part of the Oyster Bay Trail cycle route. The section of the route between Reculver and Swalecliffe opened last year and the council is in the process of finalising plans to extend it between Swalecliffe and Whitstable.

So, which characters do you think best reflect the local area? A pilot perhaps? An oyster fisherman? Maybe a hockey player?

The city council has come up with a shortlist of seven figures who could take pride of place on the clifftop bench. Now it's down to local people to decide on their top three, and those with the most votes will be created.

The seven characters are:

• A Dambuster pilot. The bouncing bomb was tested at Reculver and local pilot Bill Ottley flew one of the Lancaster Bombers and died on the Dambusters Raid.  
• A fossil collector. Many important specimens have been collected from Bishopstone Glen.  
• A Roman. A fort and settlement was built at Reculver around 43BC, probably to defend the Roman fleet anchored in the channel. It was rebuilt in the third century to protect the coast from Saxon longship raids.
• A Saxon. In the fourth century, long after the fort was abandoned, King Egbert granted land to the priest Bassa to build Reculver church. Many Anglo-Saxon items have been found near the site.
• A roller hockey player, representing the long tradition of roller hockey in Herne Bay. It began in 1901 and still has strong links in the town with the Bay Sports Arena being the proud home of roller hockey. 
• An oyster fisherman. Oysters have been found in Whitstable for centuries, where fishermen would dredge the seabed to harvest the town’s famous, native oysters.
• A diver. The Deane brothers of Whitstable invented and trialled the first underwater breathing apparatus (air-pumped diving helmet) in the town. Divers from the town salvaged sunken ships around the world, including Henry VIII's flagship, The Mary Rose.

Vote now!

Voting on which characters you would like to see make up Reculver's Portrait Bench is now open and runs until Wednesday 31 October.

Cast your vote now!

CCC website

Westgate fudge

We're about half way through the "consultation" about the Westgate Towers traffic experiment.

You may remember that thousands of people signed a petition begging for the chaos to stop. Our beloved Council immediately ignored the clamouring voices and launched a "consultation" to, er, find out what people think of the scheme.

Pop over to the Council website where you can fill in an online questionnaire. If you don't tell them what you think, they'll never know...

Westgate Jam Fudged

Views on Canterbury's controversial Westgate traffic trial ditched

Thousands of signatures and hundreds of letters about a controversial traffic trial are being swept under the carpet by council bosses. The official public consultation into the scheme to ban traffic from the Westgate Towers in Canterbury started on Friday and all previous comments will not count.

It means the 4,000 people who signed a petition calling for the scheme to be scrapped, and the hundreds who wrote both in favour and against the trial, will have to put pen to paper – or fingers to keyboard – again.

Officials launched the consultation by delivering thousands of leaflets to homes and businesses in the city centre and north Canterbury, but say they want to hear from as many people as possible – wherever they live. Canterbury City Council's transport manager Richard Moore said:

"We are expecting more than 2,000 responses but I am hoping for 4,000. That is how many people signed one of the petitions. But it is easier to sign a name on a petition than to fill in a form. The letters written in the past have all gone by the by. They related to scrapping the scheme early. A decision has been made on that and the scheme is to continue. A line has been drawn somewhere. We are now starting afresh."

Councillor Peter Vickery-Jones who is responsible for highways said it was impossible to predict what the responses would be.

"There was a lot of criticism at the start but now the debate is being thrashed out it is becoming more balanced. North Lane, lower St Dunstan's Street and St Peter's Place were very heavily polluted. Something would have had to be done, even if this trial had been abandoned."

The consultation will run until October 15 with questionnaires available online and on paper. The results are expected to be reported to the council's ruling executive committee in December, three months before the trial is due to end. Councillors will also look at traffic data, air quality and economic impact. Mr Moore said:

"The results of the consultation won't determine the results of the trial. They are part of the evidence. When the High Street was pedestrianised, 80 per cent of people were against it in the consultation. There are hard decisions to be made. The High Street would never have been done if it was just based on the results of the consultation."

Officials are also calling for a high police presence to fine motorists ignoring the bus and taxi lane around the towers. Last Wednesday, a council enforcement officer counted 19 people using the lane in just one hour, plus another six who turned around after seeing him. Cllr Vickery-Jones said number-plate recognition cameras were another option, adding:

"We are trying to persuade the county council to give us powers to have the cameras installed but it has not agreed yet. There are lots of drivers not following the Highway Code. We don't want to be Big Brother but if more people paid attention there would not be so many problems."

He said the city council was working on solutions to reported problems with short-term parking bays already in place in Station Road West. Zebra crossings will be introduced in North Lane, Station Road West and St Peter's Place. Consultants are also considering ways to improve traffic in London Road and hope to have solutions in place by October, although Cllr Vickery-Jones is pushing for it to be sooner. The crossings should be finished by the end of August.

thisiskent 9th Aug 2012

Pier review

Well, it's all kicking off over at the Pier Trust - name-calling, playground threats, hair-pulling, you name it.

Once upon a time, the Herne Bay Pier Trust had a nice little Facebook site which people would saunter over to from time to time, to find out what was new, and add their words of wisdom and encouragement.

How times change.

Reading between the lines as much as I dare, my guess is that our beloved Council has decided that the whole Pier Thing needs to be more tightly managed and controlled. Murmurs of unquiet, mutterings of discontent, and opinions that diverge from the Unquestionable Truth have all emerged in the local media recently, much to the annoyance of our Controllers.

The solution seems to have been to seek greater direct control, and to this end Cllr Cook (one of the nine or so Trustees, and one of the two councillors appointed by the Council) was annointed an Adminstrator on the Trust's Facebook site. And that's when things started to go awry.

Within the Herne Bay Pier Trust Facebook site, a new page was set up called, er, "Herne Bay Pier Trust". Hardly confusing at all. This new page, let's call it HBPT2, then started writing stuff, and replying and commenting, just as a real person would. One of the first messages gave a clear indication of what was to come:

"Facebook comunication is being Hi jacked by activists stick to being positive about the Pier please, and offer help dont just moan."

HBPT2 then went on over the next few days to speak as if it had the knowledge, authority and support of the Trustees, indeed it spoke as if it was the Pier Trust. Those who questioned the Unquestionable Truth were dubbed snipers, gripers, downers, and (gasp!) "activists". The identity of HBPT2 remains a closely guarded secret - HBPT2 has been asked to reveal itself, and has refused.

Anyway, it's Cllr Cook. I don't know if this was meant to be a light touch on the rudder to steer the Trust along the Council's preferred course, but he's managed to rile a lot of long-standing Pier supporters - do pop over to the Trust's Facebook site and have a look at the swirling confusion and anger he's left in his path.

So what's next? The ex-Trustees who invested hundreds of hours and thousands of pounds' worth of effort in the Trust will still be dismissed as grumbling malcontents. The Council will beam approvingly on those who toe the line unquestioningly. Criticism will be branded as negativism. Cheery, shallow words of encouragement will be plentiful - substantive commitment, support and promotion won't.

A lot of people will work bloody hard to make the most of what little we're being given to work with, and my heart swells with pride in anticipation of what we will probably achieve. But please don't forget - if our Council had shown the same commitment to Herne Bay as it has shown to Canterbury over the last five years, we would have our Pier by now.

Public interest, secret debate

Ladies and Gentlemen, meet the Locality Board, sounding the death knell for local democracy.

It's made up of the Canterbury City Council Executive and the 9 Kent County Council members who represent constituencies in the Canterbury District. It meets behind closed doors, and "Minutes (including a record of attendance and any conflicts of interest) will not be widely circulated".

I'll be examining the Locality Board more closely in another post.

---

Service discussed behind closed doors

The fate of the district's youth centres remains a mystery, after councillors met in private to discuss the issue. A £1 million cut in funding for youth services means there could be only one Kent County Council-funded youth club left in Canterbury, Whitstable and Herne Bay. Faversham Youth Club is also under threat.

The newly formed Canterbury Locality Board, which is made up of Canterbury county councillors and members of the ruling Tory executive of the city council, met behind closed doors on Tuesday, March 24 to debate the issue.

Liberal Democrat councillors fear that the secret meeting was used to rubber-stamp controversial plans to keep Whitstable Youth Club open instead of the city’s Riverside Centre, as originally expected. Lib Dem parliamentary spokesman James Flanagan said:

"Decisions like this should be taken in public so that the people taking them are fully accountable. Closing youth clubs can only lead to more young people ending up hanging around on street corners and getting into trouble. For councillors to hide their actions from the public is an absolute disgrace."

A final decision will be made by Kent County Council, and city council bosses said the locality board members had no powers other than to give their views. Canterbury City Council spokesman Rob Davies said:

"The meeting last week discussed the future of KCC’s youth service in the Canterbury district, and city council members were happy to have the opportunity to discuss how that service operates in the months ahead. However, the decision about youth services is one for KCC to take and any queries about its decision-making process should be directed to County Hall."

County councillor Mark Dance insisted that clubs would not close, although they could be funded differently.

"There will be no closures of any of the youth centres in the Canterbury district. However, further details are still in negotiation and will be revealed at the end of the month by cabinet member Councillor Mike Hill."

The board’s discussions will be revealed when the minutes are published of the city council's Scrutiny Committee, which meets on Wednesday, 25th April. Kent County Council will meet on 27th April to debate the issue.

Gilbey slams the gutless

But there's no hint who he might be talking about. Or what they've done.

At the recent Executive meeting, Canterbury Council Leader John Gilbey laid into someone or other. He was clearly disappointed that they weren't there to take their medicine - maybe their invitation didn't arrive in time.

OK, well I'm going to say something else now which I'd like recorded. I think it's quite clear that there are people who are quite prepared to go out to Twitter, they're prepared to email newspapers, they're prepared to cause unending sorts of trouble and worry to all sorts of residents by misrepresenting, and by having things out there that are simply not true, and they have no guts in not appearing here tonight to ask the questions.

Hear these words.

So what's actually happening here?

The Council as a whole is effectively a mechanism for rubber-stamping the decisions from the Executive. The Executive is chosen by the Leader. Thus the Precious Leader, Joniji-il Bi, enjoys a position of sweeping authority.

It would appear that someone displeased Jonji. He could have used Twitter to rebut their their arguments, or emailed the newspapers himself to put his side of the story. However, he has used (abused?) this public democratic forum to indulge in what is little more than posturing.

It's safe to assume that the rest of the Executive knew what, and who, he was talking about - he was grand-standing to a small and carefully chosen crowd. In my mind's eye, I can picture them nudging each other "Go on, Jonji, stick it to 'em... that's telling 'em". It may have played well to the Chosen Few, but it was a waste of breath.

If someone is "misrepresenting" an issue, the simplest and most effective remedy is to represent it accurately. If someone has displeased the Precious Leader, how are the rest of us to avoid repeating their error, unless we are told Who Did What?

Unless we know what is forbidden, we cannot be appropriately obedient or respectful.

Vickery-Jones showered with praise

Now here's a funny thing – at Canterbury City Council Executive on 29th March, the leader of the council, Cllr Gilbey, went out of his way to congratulate Cllr Vickery-Jones on his recent successes.

The first of these was the chaos that resulted from the re-routing of traffic around the Westgate Towers, which will probably soon be renamed the Vickery Victory Arch.

The second praiseworthy achievement was Cllr Vickery-Jones' masterful and diplomatic handling of Tesco's threatened invasion of Herne. John Gilbey gave a moving account of Cllr Vickery-Jones' single-handed triumph over the retail giant:

I would like to acknowledge the way you approached the issues that were affecting Herne village recently. It is, I think probably, an example of what a proper Ward councillor should be doing in those circumstances, which is quiet dialogue, which is talking, which is becoming aware, and in the end I think Herne probably got the result that it wanted, I'm sure in no small part to what you did there, so thanks for doing that.

Hear these words. (You can download the whole recording here, where it says Audio Version, the fun starts at 18:56)

I can't help feeling that history is being re-written...

Sep 22nd 2011: Cllr Vickery-Jones greets the news of Tesco's proposed purchase of the Red Lion at Herne thus:

Maybe they can buy the School Lane car park from the council and we can all enjoy some free parking. From the perspective of what a shop there would offer, it has to be good for the area. There isn't anywhere around there like it.

Sep 29th 2011: Local residents are unimpressed with his approach:

... the complete ignorance and stupidity of Herne councillor Peter Vickery-Jones. Has he ever visited Herne? Does he have eyes? Has he not seen the shop that is right next to the site and serves the community so very well?

I am also disgusted that a local Councillor is in favour of a Tesco Express, does he not realise what effect it would have on the area and local business, especially the shop next door and the pub opposite? He may be a councillor but he's out of touch with his local community.

Jan 12th 2012: An anti-Tesco rally fills the church at Herne, giving Cllr Vickery-Jones an opportunity to show how out of touch he is with popular feeling:

I didn’t expect so many people.

Jan 26th 2012: Tesco continue to ride rough-shod over local opinion, and the local councillor is unconvincing:

I did my best to persuade them that this is not an appropriate spot, but they are not convinced and say they have faced opposition, but over time it dries up and people start using the stores. Unfortunately I don't have any lawful way of stopping them.

Feb 3rd 2012: Tesco tries to buy its way round the problem - the parish council refuse the money, but City Cllr Vickery-Jones' hands are outstretched, in a defeated kind of way:

Peter Vickery-Jones said that, despite the parish council voting to reject any cash contributions from the supermarket as part of its planning application, the city council would be keen to use the money for a training and education project in Herne.

"Short of civil disobedience, there's nothing we can do about Tesco coming."

Mar 4th 2012: Ignoring the defeatism of their Ward councillor, the people of Herne mobilise en masse, and between 700 and 1,000 people march through Herne in protest.

Mar 9th 2012: Tesco shelve their plans, citing "highway contraints" - no mention of any "quiet dialogue" with Cllr Vickery-Jones prompting or influencing their decision. The Herne villagers earn themselves national news coverage.

It is often said that the Conservative party's not-very-secret weapon is unity. This seems to extend to unflinching loyalty to any of their number who stumble, and in this case giving them credit for anyone's success.

Cllr Gilbey lavished praise on his colleague, but said not a word about the efforts and achievement of the Herne villagers who Cllr Vickery-Jones should have been supporting and representing throughout.

Herne Bay's growth threatened by Canterbury's greed

Herne Bay's future centres on tourism - it's a business model that is tried and trusted, it's well-understood and it's sustainable.

It makes sense to make the most of the most obvious quality Herne Bay has - the fact that it's a nice little town by the seaside.

Tourism is not isolated from the rest of the local economy, quite the reverse. Our vistors - whether coming for a day trip, a weekend, or longer - generate business and spread wealth at every turn. B&B room tabs, restaurant bills, pub rounds, shop tills, even parking meters.

Money, time and effort spent encouraging tourism in Herne Bay is not expenditure, it's investment.

But Canterbury City Council seems to think differently. Rather than investing in promoting Herne Bay's tourist offering, they insist on charging people who want to promote our town and encourage tourism.

Any B&B or hotel owner who wants to promote their business on Canterbury's tourism website has to pay £275, plus £10 per room, plus VAT to get the most basic entry - bare bones facts plus 25 words of text. Times are hard and margins are tight, so this is beyond the budget of most of these small businesses.

As a result, anyone looking at Canterbury's tourism site could be forgiven for thinking that Herne Bay has just 2 B&Bs - one on Western Esplanade, and one in Herne. A stroll along the seafront will take you past many excellent B&Bs that don't get a mention.

Canterbury seems to have forgotten that it is in everyone's best interests to encourage tourism and foster a thriving local economy, rather than to grasp every chance to take yet more money from the local Council tax payers. Instead of acting as an agent of promotion, our Council has cast itself in the role of advertising agency.

Canterbury's short-term greed could be the death of our town.

Herne Bay rejects Manston night flights

As you probably know, Manston airport recently presented Thanet District Council with a proposal for scheduled night flights. TDC eventually organised a brief public consultation. Manston airport is obviously outside Canterbury's feudal realm of control, but TDC agreed to let CCC have an input to the consultation...

The agreement was that CCC would be sent copies of all the submissions made to the consultation that came from the Canterbury district. CCC could then collate the replies, mull over the contents, and then base the Council's response to TDC on what Canterbury residents had said.

230 people from the Canterbury district responded to the TDC consultation, and 80% of them opposed the night flight proposals. You can see the all the responses, or at least CCC's brutal summaries of them, HERE. And this is CCC's conclusion (you can find the full report HERE)...

Conclusion

Whilst in principle supporting the continued role that Manston Airport can provide in the economic well being of East Kent, the City Council considers that the potential for adverse impact on residents of this night-time flying proposal is not justified. The Council will therefore wish the method of operation to be kept to the current one and that further discussions are held regarding the monitoring of night-time flying activity.

Pier pressure

At long last Canterbury City Council has described its vision for the future of our Pier. In a word: short.

Some of the trustees of the Pier Trust have been angling for a new Pier for years, if not decades. All of the trustees have given generously of their time and expertise. They have drawn together a wealth of national and international experts to produce first rate proposals and business plans which they presented to our Council.

CCC dismissed them, and now we know why.

The Council was instrumental in setting up the Pier Trust, providing £5,000 of funding in the first year. This £5,000 was important, as it allowed the Pier Trust to register for charitable status. In exchange for the start-up funding, CCC insisted on having two councillors on the board of trustees.

In an ideal world, these two councillors would have provided a direct line of communication with the Council, thus speeding up the decision-making and smoothing progress. More recently, however, they seem to have been used as a way of keeping an wary eye on the Trust, dampening expectations, and limiting options.

The inevitable frustration with lack of progress led to some of the dedicated and hard-working volunteers resigning from the Trust. Unsurprising - there's a limit to how long anyone will bang their head against a wall. And the Council had the nerve to publicly badmouth the Trust and the trustees.

And now we know why. The Council, our Council, never intended to rebuild the Pier.

The Pier Trust's clearly stated objective has always been to rebuild the Pier. The Council's representatives on the board of trustees didn't support the Trust's goal, but undermined and stifled it. We've seen how effectively Canterbury City Council has been when raising money for projects in Canterbury (Beaney, Marlowe). No such efforts were made for this project in Herne Bay.

Click HERE to read an excellent response to the Council's criticisms of the Trust, and a few well-placed criticisms of the Council. The splendid Kim Hennelly cut to the chase with her characteristic directness, and asked Cllr Gilbey (Leader of the Council) whether CCC ever intended to rebuild the Pier. Here's the reply:

Mrs Hennelly

I am writing in response to your email of 7 March 2012 regarding the future of Herne Bay Pier and the council’s intentions in this regard.

The council does not have any current intention of rebuilding the pier itself, our Corporate Plan pledges to improve the sea front and the current pier platform.

The Herne Bay Pier Trust was set up so that a business plan could be developed by the Trust working with the people of Herne Bay. The council is supporting this process by helping the Trust to develop its business plan during this year and to deliver events and activities on the pier platform for the 2012 season. We expect the Trust to pursue rebuilding or extending the Pier if they consider that to be right.

Regards

Dawn Hudd CMgr, MIED
Deputy Head of Culture & Enterprise
Canterbury City Council

So there you have it.

The Council is happy to knock down the Pier - which needed to be knocked down because it had been so cheaply maintained over the years that demolition became cheaper than continued patching. The Council is happy to splash down some tarmac and let us have "events and activities" on it.

But if the Trust wants to rebuild the Pier, they're on their own. I think the Council, our Council, should have made that clear from the very beginning.

Our Council must support the Pier Trust

An open letter to CCC from the Pier Trust's ex-Treasurer Jason Hollingsworth and ex-Chairman Graham Cooper:

In light of all the recent Council criticism of the Pier Trust in the press, as past Trustees we feel compelled to respond and set the record straight.

Firstly and perhaps rather tellingly, our first observation is astonishment that CCC should level any criticism at the Trust at all, after all the Pier Trust is a community organisation and if the council considers there are deficiencies why has CCC not done the right thing and wholeheartedly got behind the Trust and to support it and help to rectify those supposed failings.

After all, CCC does have two council appointed Trustees on the board! Perhaps this would have been a more constructive approach and a far better one, than simply to sitting back and sniping. Indeed, looking back to the last Pier Trust Annual General Meeting, as we recall, one of the councillor Trustees presented the assembled members with all the plans he envisaged for use of the pier in 2012. What has happened to them? Perhaps that is where any criticism should be directed.

Since its inception, the Trust has continued to attract very committed, high calibre individuals to help and advise it. Many of the Trustees regularly put in hundreds of hours per year unpaid to work solely for a better future for Herne Bay and should be lauded for doing so.

The Trust has produced several sound ideas and organised numerous successful events, Party on the Pier – a huge all day event that offered free roller skating and entertainment for the whole of Herne Bay, the Christmas Grotto, events at the Herne Bay Festival and the Herne Bay schools arts project to name but a few, all of which happened with little or no assistance from CCC.

Throughout 2011 the Trust participated in a joint working group with CCC and from our experience the key difficulty was getting clear and consistent answers from the council as to their plans, ideas and funding. If any criticism is to be levelled at the Trust, it can surely only be lack of resource. The problem has never been lack of experience or commitment.

In our view, the Trust has never been effectively or adequately supported by the Council. Indeed that is at the core of why so many Trustees have stood down in the past few years. This is in stark contract to Hastings, where with the full support and help of the local council, the Trust has been able to obtain considerable funding to produce its long term business plan.

To truly deliver on the expectations of the Trust’s members and the Town as a whole, full and effective support from the Council is essential. We know that the Trust has done all it can to move things forward in a constructive and professional manner.

Perhaps the Council now needs to do its part by addressing the confused relationship between the Trust and the Council and replacing it with an open, honest and effective partnership agreement with clear responsibilities and objectives for all concerned. We truly hope that this will be forthcoming as without it the Pier Trust’s objectives both short and long term will be completely unachievable.

Jason Hollingsworth

Graham Cooper

Plea for a free parking

He is the "mattress king" with a commitment to a traditional town centre. She's the "queen of shops" trying to revive the country's high streets. Now Herne Bay's Dylan Hampshire says town bosses need to take the words of Mary Portas to heart and make parking free across central shopping areas.

The Cockett's Beds owner spoke out as councillors were set to debate sweeping changes to parking costs in the town; introducing a "linear" system like Canterbury, with set fees per hour. But campaigner Mr Hampshire said it was urgent that councillors and officers took Mary Portas's recommendations seriously – not least introducing free parking. The retail guru recommends abolishing charges in all towns as part of an independent review into the nation's high streets. He said:

"If we do this in Herne Bay all other towns across Kent will be watching to see how well it works. It will give us a real advantage. If you go to big out of town shopping centres you don't have to pay for your parking. Almost all shopkeepers will tell you they've lost count of the amount of times people have come into their stores – then had to rush out again as their parking ticket ran out. If a trial scheme could be put in place by the summer the town would have a real head-start."

But West Bay councillor and Canterbury City Council finance boss Peter Lee said free parking was not an option. He said:

"If we didn't have the revenue from parking we would have to make increases in prices or cuts in services somewhere else. Herne Bay probably has more free on-street car parking than most other towns – remember that the seafront is free October to April."

thisiskent 6th Jan 2012

"Free" parking for Herne Bay

A free parking scheme could be launched in Herne Bay to compete with out-of-town shopping centres like Westwood Cross. Town boss Chris West wants businesses to refund parking tickets to people who spend £10 or more in their shops.

He hopes to convince at least 20 traders to sign up to the proposal, which he says could be introduced by the spring. He said:

“It would work by having the parking meters modified so they produced two tickets. One would be displayed in the car and the other would be redeemed at a participating retailer. I am going to try and get businesses to support this by asking them to refund up to two hours parking providing a customer spends £10 or more in their shop. A sign will be displayed on the meters with a list of participating businesses and each shop will have a window sticker. To make it work I estimate I’ll need around 20 businesses to participate.”

A letter will be sent to all businesses in the town this week asking them to support the scheme, the brainwave of Roger’s Menswear owner Tony Symonds. He said:

“I had this idea a few years ago. One of the biggest concerns people shopping in the town have is paying for parking. This scheme would put us on a level playing field with the out-of-town shopping centres. Businesses can set their own limits on how much customers have to spend and put it down as a business expense, so it becomes tax-deductible. We make money, the council makes money and the shoppers save money. It would also put Herne Bay in the unique position of being the first town in the area to offer a free parking scheme like this.

Council spokesman Steve James said:

“There would be cost implications because we would have to update the software in our meters and put new tickets in them. We would want as little cost as possible to be passed on to the council tax payer. Theoretically it should be  fine – we are just looking into it.”

kentonline 5th Jan 2012