Author: simon
Cheetah Marine: Marine Restrictions Removal?
Wednesday, 21st May, 2008 at 5:16 pm, Isle of Wight
Hey Ventnor/Isle of Wight, did you know that Cheetah Marine have again applied to change their previously granted planning permission for the Ventnor Eastern Esplanade development?
We’ve been a little quiet on the latest planning application by Cheetah Marine. It seemed to be a story that was developing, as documents were gradually released by Cheetah Marine (bit strange not to release them all at once) - indeed the Ventnor Town Council commented that the information that they’ve been provided with for their decision was lacking the correct detail.
Finally it looks like that the information that’s required for the public to understand what’s going on has been delivered. It just takes a while to dig out what is really going on.
Here’s the summary - Their obligation to keep the site for Marine Usage forever has been mysteriously removed from the legal agreement (the S.106) and they want to have the obligation to host the office for the harbour master to also be removed.
These were two items that were central to the granting of the original planning permission.
There are a couple of other bits, but we’ll go into those another time.
Marine use, in perpetuity
One of the saving graces from the granting of the planning to Cheetah back in April 2007 was that facilities for the public (cafe, toilet, shower and harbour master’s office) and that the sites continued use for marine related employment should be in perpetuity, ie forever.
One reason for the ‘in perpetuity’ clause was to ensure that, in the future, the Cheetah building wasn’t converted into flats.
It was a small way to ensure that the bargain basement price that Cheetah can buy freehold land for — a mere £100,000 for the whole site — was balanced by the area’s continued service to the town.
SEEDA history
Having the public facilities (harbour master’s office, cafe, toilet and shower) and Marine-related use weren’t just some random suggestion put forward by Ventnor Mayor Susan Scoccia at the planning meeting. She had them included for good reason - they were part of the requirements insisted on by SEEDA when they granted development money and they formed part of the Eastern Esplanade development brief.
Indeed, as Jonathon Fitzgerald Bond said in the opening paragraphs of his presentation to the Planning Committee (on 24 April 2007) on why Ventnor needed Cheetah Marine to build on the Eastern Esplanade,
“The original condition applied by Seeda when they provided a grant of £1m towards the building of Ventnor Haven, was that it should be the catalyst to provide marine employment and also to help toward the provision of harbour facilities such as a harbour office, shower and toilets, for harbour users.”
What can you do?
The public consultation for the variation of conditions on the planning permission finishes this Friday, 23 May.
At present there are only a handful of comments, probably due to the fact that the omission of ‘marine use only’ is hidden deep within the legal document and is not something most people would go through with a fine tooth comb (we did).
If you are concerned about this leave us a comment and tell others. You can comment on the Planning Website.
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May 22nd, 2008 at 1:53 pm
There is no justification for altering the conditions/requirements! If this project is to go ahead it must be for the original, marine, purpose. It must be for the good of the town, surely, and not for the long term benefit of a developer.
May 22nd, 2008 at 2:30 pm
as val taylor say at a recent town counsil meeting why are they trying to have another bit of the cherry?
if the marine use is taken away - then does that mean that if cheetah marine sell the building at a later stage it can turn into anything? like holidays homes
May 22nd, 2008 at 5:01 pm
You really have to wonder about the competence of the IW Council’s Legal Dept. They have drafted a legal agreement between Cheetah Marine and the IW Council which says that if the owner of the marine industry site (CM when they acquire the freehold, but it could be sold on)doesn’t get the job of Harbour Master, then the required condition for permanent provision of harbour master facilities will be satisfied if the site owners use their “best endeavours” to find a spot for the harbour master.
Can you imagine two highly paid sets of lawyers arguing whether the site owner has tried hard enough to accommodate a harbour master ?
As a legal clause, it is unenforceable and not worth the paper it is written on - what is worse, it would enable CM or the site owners to simply walk away from the harbour master obligation (”We tried hard, we really did. Pity we failed.”)
Then in another part of this legal agreement, they have copied down an old superseded version of Condition 14 without the clause about permanent marine use. They seem not to know that the condition was corrected to take account of the directions (twice) of the Planning Committee that the condition was to contain the permanent marine use clause.
And this is the legal team that the Council pays with our Council Tax. If I were Pugh, I would send them to join the other failed civil servants that let the Council and the community down so badly.
May 22nd, 2008 at 9:29 pm
[...] their business well and hope that they do contribute to 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 [...]