Residents will be asked how they think Ramsgate could be improved in a scheme being launched by Thanet council next week.
The Ramsgate Future plan, announced in February, will build on existing and upcoming schemes, including the recent allocation of £2.7m from the government’s Future High Street fund. The scheme is aimed at regeneration plans and new local projects such as improvements to transport infrastructure, new homes and the transformation of underused spaces. It is understood much of the High Street grant will be used on highways/public realm projects.
The fund runs alongside the five-year, £450,000 Heritage Action Zone(s) scheme which launched in 2017. It was announced that the project was to attract new investment into Ramsgate and create apprenticeships, boost tourism and involve schools and the community in exhibitions and heritage-related skills training.
There are also plans for the Port as part of a feasibility study which examined possible future uses for the site including reviving the hotel and conference centre plan for the Smack Boys Home building and creating industrial zones, waterfront homes, retail and themed leisure facilities.
The Future plan will also be used for Thanet council’s Levelling Up funding bid to government for Ramsgate.
Pleydell Smithyman Limited, an independent specialist consultancy which led the Margate Town Deal engagement, has been commissioned to head up a programme of community and stakeholder engagement to help shape the investment plan.
A key part of developing the plan is engagement with stakeholders and the community, which will be used alongside the feedback gathered last year in response to the port and harbour feasibility study.
Members of the business and community sector in Ramsgate have been invited to a launch event next week to hear about the plans.
A wider programme of online and COVID-19 secure face to face stakeholder and community engagement will then follow which will be open to all Ramsgate residents.
Cabinet Member for Ramsgate’s Regeneration, Cllr Rick Everitt, said: “Listening to the people who live in, work in and visit Ramsgate is an important part of developing a strategy for the future of the town.
“Ensuring we understand local priorities will mean we can prepare an investment plan which reflects local views and focuses on the things that matter most. This is an exciting opportunity for Ramsgate and I’d encourage people to get involved.”
if the port is to be built on it needs to be a project to draw in the tourists or something for the people of Thanet, definitely not housing or hotels or industrial. it needs to generate jobs, perminant ones not temporary, something like a sealife centre or even a go-cart track, or something for the younger generation. housing will just price locals out.
👍
I agree, we do not need houses around this area, as it will only encourage people from outside the area and ready builders to destroy our royal harbour. We need a working port not rich people o exploit this port.
When will something be done about the land at the bottom of MARINA ROAD around the car park. Its a disgrace. The people buying the new seafront property’s will have to see it everytime they drive down to their £400,000propertys.Lovely viewing
TDC should be able to enforce that graffiti is removed from all properties by the owners of that property including the council itself graffiti should be removed it as soon as it appears and bring in heavy fines for those found responsible for spoiling and the criminal damage of the buildings in the first place The message should be passed on to the schools so children know that criminal damage has consequences.
TDC want to turn one of the most iconic and historical buildings on our harbour front into a conference centre, unbelievable. Destroying listed buildings, hang your heads in shame
NO housing on the port. Clean industries- and it’s time we knew whether Brett’s is A) legally there B) a polluting industry or not. The port should continue to be one.
The port area should be developed into a huge indoor water park, possibly with the option of retracting part of the roof in the summer. This would bring in plenty of visitors and would support the local economy.
Why on earth is the High Street grant being used on highways? Isn’t that the responsibility of KCC or are we now going grant hunting for our paths and roadways? What exactly is the money due to go on?
My thoughts exactly, it makes no sense to use the grant for highways when the grant was given for the High Street regeneration. I would like to know exactly how the council plans to spend that grant and justify everything to the penny, because this money are for the community use.
Why isn’t the High Street Grant being used on the high street? Heaven knows it needs it. If I was a tourist I wouldn’t want to come to a place that looks like a shabby versiom of a ghost town.
The council should spend the grant on the High Street and port/ sea front and they should definitely have a look at some pretty town centres/High Streets around UK (places like Bath, Rye, Royal Tunbridge Wells,Norwich etc.) and also look at the beautiful towns around the world, and use them as inspiration to develop a new more appealing High Street.
People need to have more beautiful, clean and functional areas to socialize and spend their free time and money on.
Ramsgate needs a clean and more modern fresh look, with a lot more trees, vegetation and beautiful flower arrangements. We need quality and innovation, a facelift to all the tired buildings on the High Street. We need the local businesses to take over all the empty commercial spaces and transform a sad town centre into a chic, vibrant and attractive area with beautiful display shops windows and quaint coffee shops with outdoor and indoor seating were both the locals & tourists would enjoy and come back again and again.
Well said jr! I’ve always envisaged the port being redeveloped into something like an aquarium, botanical gardens, natural play area (like the Leas in Folkestone) or a water park. A fake marina with nautical-themed housing blocks around it (I’m looking at you Southampton/ Swansea/ Brighton) is the quickest way to make an area totally dull and devoid of spirit. I love living in Ramsgate but I can see how it could go either way depending on the vision of the people behind its future. Let’s make it the jewel of the Kent Coast!
👍
Ramsgate has suffered more due to covid.
Small and large retailers are disappearing.
Each time I travel there, I find it deserted for the most part. Could we see a renaissance and bring back some colour and
life with a variety of shops bars and cafès.
No point doing anything if the plans for a polluting great freight hub materialises at Manston. That would soon destroy our coast and tourism in Ramsgate.
Invest in the harbour.
Invest in tourism
Sea life centre, go cart great ideas.
Put manston airport to bed for good.its a non starter.
Let RTC run more areas of ramsgate as Ramsgate under the TDC comes last for every thing.
How about attracting a variety of brand name shops, various goods (but discounted prices) to a new mall set up within ramsgate town (not quite sure logistics!)? It would draw people from surrounding areas to Ramsgate, instead of going to Ashford and beyond. Reatil therapy and sea front all in same area? The restaurants would be happy as would have more clients.
Sort out the multi storey once and for all, reduce parking fees elsewhere.
Thus money needs to be spent on the town to clean it, upgrade it and bring people back.
Ramsgate like the rest of Thanet is very tired, it has suffered a torrent of neglect over many years at the hands of an incompetent TDC.
You can throw as much money as you like at Ramsgate but unless we have a cull of these scum bags, thrown at us by the London boroughs, it’ll be money down the drain I’m afraid.
Agree, your comment is fair and accurate. I am leaving Ramsgate because of the levels of drunkenness and drugged behaviour on the streets.
Also, unconnected, there is NO added value to Ramsgate where there are acres and acres of plastic windows. They are being installed in some of the prettiest streets in the town.
Scumbags and plastic windows, – a death knell. No hope.
Where do you think you might go to where there aren’t “plastic” windows?
I have to say that on my daily (and pre Covid, nightly) walks round and about town, I saw no more antisocial behaviour than in many town centres.
Good luck with your move.
Nirvana? Valhalla??
Lots of boozing in Valhalla, that’s why King Ethelbert didn’t want to convert to Christianity!
I don’t see much ,if any,drunkenness or unmistakeable “drugged behaviour” when I’m in Ramsgate during the day.
PVC windows are ugly, true, but, like Phyllis Quot, I think you’d find it hard to avoid seeing them if you moved to anywhere with quite a lot of houses.
Maybe a shepherd’s hut in a field would be PVC-free.
RTC should back RSP who are willing to put more than £300 million to make the Airport at Manston work. Plus stop wasting large sums of money using consolation companies to fight the airport.
RSP might well be willing to put £300M in, but it’s not their money, because they have very little. The most they’ve made out of Manston *EVER* is to rent it out as a POST-BREXIT lorry park.
But, even if RSP do manage to get investors and banks interested, just opening up the airport won’t make it work. An analysis of RSP’s business model said that in order to pay a dividend on investments and interest on loans, they would have to charge such high landing fees that no one would use Manston.
So I think we can carry on sleeping soundly in our beds.
John, 300million will last about a month. RSP also have no money. Supposedly they have some overseas investors who are supposedly being replaced by other overseas investors.
Oh, also they have no customers.
Oh, and no DCO permission either.
Impressive isn’t it.
Sort out the community social problems first !
Surely if its named the high Street grant it should be spent on the high Street. You walk from a lovely harbour area into a shabby ghost town. Get the money into regenerating the town centre not the highways. Even tidying the empty shop fronts to make them more presentable would be a start
Spend it on the high street where needed and what given for. The harbour is glorious as it is and the jewel in the crown of Ramsgate. Crazy thinking that they want to mess with the best bit!
Surely, there needs to be a strategic view about what are industries of the future, not just ideas to bring in tourism? For example, think about the Levelling Up programme being created by the Government, and Labour’s idea for a Future of Work MP. Also, tourism only brings people to Thanet during the summer months… what happens in the autumn and winter? Plus, the suggestions of boosting tourism jobs just creates more low-paid seasonal work. With rising house prices thanks to the quicker London transport links attracting Londoners to buy up housing stock and pricing locals out of building their own sustainable future in the area. Some bigger plans should be considered. Thanet District Council need to focus on the longer-term and research the potential of newer industries, such as the Green industry and also what automation through artificial intelligence will have on the jobs being done today. It’s a complex problem that requires a lot of thinking and planning for.
I think we need to be honest here. If the airport opens as planned at Manston with a plane every few minutes over Ramsgate at 500ft with deafening noise every day for 7 days a week, 365 days a year with on average 7 late arriving planes every night (RSP figures from their submission) there seems little point in investing in Ramsgate at all as businesses won’t be able to operate due to constant noise interrupting phone calls and meetings, hotels will not have guests and tourists will go to other parts of Thanet or Kent. This is what the planning inspectors concluded (see the report on their website) would happen saying Ramsgate would suffer but other parts of East Kent like Canterbury might possibly benefit. Perhaps that’s why the funding is proposed to be used on highways to enable people to drive through Ramsgate quickly and get to other places. We must also accept (as TDC have highlighted) that a town with an airport will have it’s housingnumbers increased substantially.
Use Southend airport as an example. Local residents in the thousands have signed a petition to halt the all night flights as it is disturbing their sleep. Southend council’s S106 agreement with the airport operator has been abused and residents are up in arms to get a full nights sleep.
These people were living there before the airport expansion under agreement of the council. Now they are having issues trying to stop it.
Once permission is given it is difficult to take it away so don’t believe RSP, Gale and Grant Shapps the SOS, they are looking after themselves and do not care about the residents living next to a busy airport.
TDC have a habit of not being transparent with funding, the Margate Town Deal have succeeded in getting £22 million odd from the government to improve the town but they are handing £4 million of it over to the private company that bought Dreamland late last year. There is no explanation what this money is to be used for and how. TDC have also not spoken about where the funding went that was to make a community garden in Margate’s old town either. They took the funding then sold the land to a developer with consent to fell a mature tree on it, which is in the conservation area and should have been protected. So many dodgy things taking place and no transparency.
Why would a town with a cargo airport (lots of noise, but few jobs) have a substantial increase in population?
Develop the High Street and stop wasting that grant on other things. We need a new fresh look to attract both locals and tourists and encourage people to socialize and spend their money on.
We need local businesses to open new trendy and chic shops with attractive windows and more coffee shops and restaurants with beautiful outdoor &indoor sitting areas. This town and it’s people deserve a more beautiful and functional High Street and water front.
We need to be able to buy basic but good-quality things.We need(as far as shops go) a wide range of them, but I don’t think there will be a renaissance, as Westwood Cross and Amazon has screwed local retail up pretty drastically.
Westwood Cross is failing with trying to attract decent and different retailers to the area. Debenhams has now gone and Argos has closed too. Hopefully the local high streets will fight back as it’s a traffic nightmare getting to WWX anyway.
To homever thinks the reopening of Manston airport is a positive thing because it will bring many jobs to Thanet area, I would like to ask them to do a bit of research because they are highly mistaken. If anything opening an IKEA store there would be way better. More jobs and more people would travel to the area.
And TDC should stop wasting community’s money and use the High Street grant for the High street as Ramsgate town centre is already looking like a sad ghost town, exactly as other people previously mentioned.
The Council should start doing it’s job and working for the people, stopping with fake talk and especially with taking brown envelopes and ignoring the voice of the community. Enough is enough!
IOTN, Kathy, please could you find out why the High Street fund is being used on highways? This seems really absurd. Thank you
i seem to remember all the local arty farty club , complaining when witherspoons ( the best thing in years ) wanted to have thier ” gallerys ” and other old nonsense in the building to the left of the pub , i believe they got thier way ? last time i looked it was still boarded up ? and dont even start me of on the scrap barge lying in the the inner harbour – a total eyesore !!!!