A block of 13 council flats and four houses will be built on the site of a Margate pub which was destroyed in a blaze.
Fires and vandalism at the Dane Valley Arms had been a constant problem since its closure in 2012.
In August 2012, some 30 firefighters battled the flames at the property in Dane Valley Road when a blaze took hold in the early hours.
The pub, which had been a fixture for more than a century, was then demolished in December 2016 after Thanet council served notice due to its unsafe condition.
Thanet District Council served the demolition order in September 2016. Owners, Dane Valley Arms Limited, were given a period of eight weeks to carry out the work. They failed to carry that out so TDC stepped in and recharged the company for the work.
A year prior to the blaze planning permission had been granted for nine houses, four flats and a pub at ground floor, following demolition of existing building.
In 2017 KSD Group Ltd & Coldunell Ltd asked for permission to create 10 flats, seven houses, ground floor micropub and associated parking at the site but this did not take place.
Now Thanet council has lodged an application to create the flats – seven 1-bed and six 2-bed- and four 3-bed semi detached homes plus 18 parking spaces across the site.
A public consultation about the scheme was previously held in May at Millmead Community Hall.
Since then the project has had a review of the positioning of dwellings fronting Dane Valley Road,, consideration of a potential lighting scheme and how this may impact nearby residents, a review of roof design, height, and scale, review of parking and access routes,
It is one of four applications for 100% affordable housing development within the district. Across all four schemes Thanet District Council plans to deliver 49 homes in response to an identified need for the area.
The four developments at Dane Valley Arms, Tomlin Drive, Staner Court and Clements Road, constitute Phase 4 of the council’s affordable housing project and are the first to be targeting ‘net zero’ to keep down the costs of heating and hot water.
All the affordable rent new build units will be let to households on Thanet Council’s Housing Register and retained as council stock. The units will be let at an affordable rent in perpetuity (subject to right to buy applications). The scheme is funded via a mix of right to buy receipts, Thanet District Council’s Housing Revenue Account – new properties reserves, DLUHC Brownfield Land Release Find grant, and Public Works and Loan Board borrowing.
The Dane Valley Arms site is currently accessed by secure gates and site hoarding has been erected at the boundaries. The footprint of the pub is littered with overgrown buddleia plants.
The forecourt and former garage access remain as hard standing, littered with rubbish and rubble. Some boundary walls of the demolished garage remain, along with the retaining structure/masonry wall along the boundary of the pub garden.
The pub garden has been left to nature, garden plants have continued to grow and the brambles and buddleia are overgrown.
The site is identified in the Local Plan 2020 for housing development.
The plans can be seen on Thanet council’s planning portal, reference F/TH/23/1339
Government funding
Thanet council has been allocated £685,275 of government funding which will be used to support the building of homes on brownfield sites
The funding, through the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) Brownfield Land Release Fund, will go towards phase four of the council’s programme to with 49 new homes being built. They will form part of the council’s social housing stock and will be rented out to households on the housing register.
Locations have been identified at Tomlin Drive, Dane Valley Road and the former Dane Valley Arms site in Margate, and Staner Court and Clements Road in Ramsgate. All of these are brownfield sites, which means the land has been previously developed. They are all owned by the council, and currently have either disused garages or laundry drying areas on them.
TDC has successfully developed and provided 51 new social housing properties across the district (Phase 1 – 11 units, Phase 2 – 14 units, and Phase 3 – 26 units). Phase 4 marks a turning point, providing a similar quantity of dwellings as Phases 1 through 3, with the target of minimising operational energy demands
