Ventnor Blog

Most of our regular readers will know us well by now. On most issues, we try to stay as impartial as possible, but we are only human and every so often, something happens that gets our goat. It’s often because of a public injustice or people in ‘power’ abusing their position.

Luckily, we have the freedom of VentnorBlog being self determined and not a ‘newspaper’ (or newsletter) where editorial is often stymied through commercial pressures. The proposal for Cheetah Marine to build on the public car park is one that we can’t ignore - for fairly obvious reasons.

So it was a surprise to learn last week that despite clear and apparent local opposition to Cheetah Marine’s plans, it appears the council have magically done a U-turn.

As you may know, at last Monday’s planning meeting, the Town Council ’saw no reason why planning permission should not be granted’ on the revised application.

According to John Farrant (as detailed in Simon’s post on the forum), there was no detail recorded of who voted what at the meeting. Mr Farrant went on to state, that from memory, there were no votes of objection to the proposal.

Perhaps they hadn’t read Dennis Russell from the CPRE’s (Campaign for the Protection of Rural England) objection letter. His arguments are pretty strong and very hard to ignore.

This seems a fortunate reversal for Cheetah Marine, given that at the previous Town Council Planning Meeting when this was discussed (9th October 2006), there were five councillors who voted against the proposal.

Please take note that we are reporting ‘in the dark’ as we weren’t at the meeting. Remember that there are no records of the votes, or minutes of the meeting (which tend to be a brief account anyway), and despite Councillors apparently visiting the forum, they have chosen not to comment on this subject.

To quote Dennis Russell again …

“…after receiving planning permission for development of a 0.11 hectare designated site on Ventnor Eastern Esplanade, Cheetah Marine would pay £10,000 up-front as some sort of legal fee, followed by £18,000 a year site rental for 5 years, after which they could claim the freehold of the site, provided that the site had been developed according to the planning permission. This applies only to Cheetah Marine, which has been given status of “preferred developer”, and who would then presumably be free to sell on the site or apply for redevelopment.”

In our view, the Town Council seems to have forgotten the central issue here … how did a public amenity space get sold to a commercial venture?

Planning, Politics, Community