Thanet council agrees to forward fund £535k to buy Pie Factory Music’s Ramsgate Youth Centre base

Thanet council has agreed to ‘forward fund’ £535k for Pie Factory Music to buy the freehold for  its Ramsgate Youth Centre base – securing its future after 15 months of uncertainty.

The Ramsgate Neighbourhood Board, which oversees the £20m Pride in Place funding awarded to the town with Thanet council as the accountable body, agreed the funding on December 12.

KCC provided Pie Factory Music with two options – either lease the site, at a commercial rate (£40k per annum) over the next 20 years, or purchase the site, as a special purchaser, for £535,000, provided the purchase is completed by the end of January 2026. If not, KCC would sell the site at auction.

However, the Pride in Place funding is not officially released until next April so Thanet council Cabinet members agreed on December 18 to forward fund the amount from the Local Regeneration Fund (made up of Levelling Up, Town Deal and Future High Street funding) to make sure the deal was sealed.

Repayment will be made from the Pride in Place Programme when the funds become available next year.

Pie Factory Music now needs to review and agree to the grant conditions which are a safeguard for public investment and include a requirement to use the site for youth services in perpetuity, deliver specific outcomes for young people, maintain the site in good condition, and reinvest any generated income back into youth provision.

The grant will also be secured as a 20-year charge against the property.

During the Cabinet meeting Cllr Ruth Duckworth, portfolio holder for regeneration, said it was a “powerful demonstration of the Pride in Place programme in action.”

She added: “This is a significant opportunity, an immediate and impactful intervention to secure a long term step change for Ramsgate’s young people.”

Cllr John Davis said Pie Factory “touches the whole community” while Cllr Tricia Austin welcomed the “brilliant news.”

Pie’s CEO Zoë Carassik said: “This is the best possible news we could get before Christmas! Now it’s a matter of the purchase process going smoothly, so that we can complete the purchase in the timeframe required by KCC, but we are excited about what 2026 now holds for Pie. #

“This really is the best Christmas present ever.”

Ramsgate Youth Centre- known as Concorde- was first opened in 1969.