Ventnor Blog

One thing we’d like to make very clear, is that although we, and others, were openly against the planning application for Cheetah Marine to construct a boat building factory on the esplanade car park — the land that they will be able to buy from the council for £100k — when permission was granted last April, we said “OK, it’s gone through, there’s nothing more we can do, except wish their business well and hope that the development will contribute to the regeneration of Ventnor.”

Yesterday we covered the curiousness of the disappearing ‘for marine use only’ wording from the legal agreement (more details shortly), but in the meantime there are other issues that are worth looking at before the end of the public consultation period tomorrow.

Harbour Master’s Office
As Jonny Fitzgerald Bond pointed out in his representation to the DCC on 25 April 2007, the provision of the Harbour Master’s office is needed to meet the criteria specified by the SEEDA funding for the Haven.

You may remember that when in October 2007, Cheetah Marine applied for changes to their April 2007 planning permission, they wanted to have the obligation to provide a Harbour Master’s office ‘in perpetuity’ removed. The reason they gave, was that they would be unable to raise finance with this condition in place, thus ‘jeopardising’ the development.

This request was refused by the Planning Committee on 27 November, “To ensure that the community benefits of this scheme are retained in perpetuity and to comply with the Ventnor Eastern Esplanade Development Brief.”

Now Cheetah Marine have once again requested that this condition be removed, but this time they state in their submitted paperwork that, “There would be a possibility in the future that Cheetah Marine are not contracted to provide harbour master services for the haven. As such it would be unreasonable to require any future harbour master contractor to be obliged to operate from the same facility.”

So it’s now no longer to do with raising finance, but something else instead.

This is getting confusing
Sorry to add another layer of confusion to this now, but it’s not of our doing. The latest reason what we’ve heard is quite different. It’s the version given by Sean Strevens (co-owner of Cheetah Marine) at the Ventnor Town Council meeting on Monday.

He claimed that if the IW Council, in the future, decided to change the role of the Harbour Master and perhaps run it from a van again (highly unlikely), and Cheetah Marine used the space for anything other than a Harbour Master’s office, that they would be in breach of planning permission (something that doesn’t appear to bother many property developers on the Island).

This condition was set over a year ago, it was discussed at Planning Committee six months later and only NOW, the legal department are stating that it would be unlawful to implement?

This is getting more than confusing. Which one of the reasons that have been used is it? Which one are we supposed to believe?

That aside, wouldn’t the breach in planning permission that Mr Strevens referred to on Monday be easily be avoided with a legalised version of the following wording …

“If the council decide to change the role of the harbour master, so that he/she would not require an office at the Cheetah Marine building, then permission is granted for the office to be used for another marine related purpose.”

Given that the argument of needing an office for the harbour master was heavily used in order to gain permission, isn’t it incredible that Cheetah Marine are trying to get out of having to provide this space?

There is time to act
You have until 4pm tomorrow to comment on this on the planning website.

Image: Julian Winslow

Business, Planning, Politics, Ventnor