Thanet council hopes to use part of Ramsgate Port to house 50 storage containers to rent and a hangar, providing storage space for use by a local businesses.
The authority has submitted a planning application to site the container park on the space of the recently demolished former departure lounge building.
An urgent decision was agreed last year to remove the asbestos and demolish the building at a cost of approximately £250k.
The old port terminal building (Building 4015) was built in 1980/81 when the port was originally constructed. It previously housed a duty-free hall and cafe with office space above.
The building had been vacant for more than a decade and was decommissioned. The main reception area is still in use and houses the Ramsgate & Broadstairs Sea Cadets.
The container park would consist of 50, 20ft storage containers and the 20 x 8m hangar, adjacent to the proposed Green Campus development.
Access will be from Military Road – and via the proposed Green Campus once this has been built.
Documents say the ‘relatively small’ site would have no permanent structures or materials.
The aim of the park is to produce revenue for the council’s harbour account.
The application, reference F/TH/26/0355, is yet to be decided.
Other recent revenue-making schemes include agreements to negotiate leases for a fish processing canning factory to the north of the port near the roundabout on Military Road and one for a marine radar testing facility at the south-eastern corner of the Port.
Construction of the port started in 1979 and commercial activities started in the summer of 1981. For the first 17 years of operation the private company, Port of Ramsgate Ltd, operated the Port.
The Port expanded rapidly to meet the demand for cross channel services with three ro-ro berths serving vessel arrivals on a 24/7 basis. In 1998 following the cessation of Duty Free concessions, ferry operators Sally Ferries and Ostende Lines withdrew their cross channel services and the port operator, Port Ramsgate Ltd, ceased trading.
The council then took the decision to start operating the Port directly and attracted new operator TransEuropa Ferries, which ran freight and car passenger services to Ostend for 15 years, until it went bankrupt in 2013.
Since then there has been a general lack of investment in the port and to resume ro-ro operations it would require investment in the region of £17.5m to bring the berths and associated quayside infrastructure back to an operational status.
Plans for a £7.6m project aimed at bringing ferry operations back to Ramsgate Port as part of the town’s £19.8m Levelling Up programme were ditched last June due to the cost of making the port operational for ro-ro services and failure to secure an operator.
There had been interest from the Port of Dover in taking over operations at the Port of Ramsgate but this did not go forward with a tender because of the short timescales involved and the huge costs of bringing the site up to scratch.
There was also one other potential, unnamed operator in December 2024 but the procurement process was formally abandoned on 28 January last year due to the amount of investment needed.
Last December Thanet council agreed to explore short-term income schemes at the Port while going through the process of a Harbour Revision Order (HRO) to remove the Open Port Duty linked to the ro-ro (roll-on roll-off) berths and associated land at Ramsgate Port.
By ridding itself of the open port duty the council removes the statutory obligation to keep the port open to vessels.
The length of time the HRO will take means the Port issue will become the responsibility of a new unitary council under the local government reorganisation plans when it goes live in April 2028.
However, the aim was also to find short term income to halt the haemorrhaging of cash associated with the port.
Thanet council papers show the Port – excluding harbour income- made a loss of some £18.7million between 2012 and 2024.
The stupid brain dead idiots of TDC want to give up the chance of giving the area the best tourist attraction in the SE by putting a load of metal boxes in the port, in six months they will be covered in graffiti and surrounded by weeds and litter. Get a grip someone.
For all the great plans previously announced, we get to the bottom of the barrel, shipping containers. I wonder how much the person who came up with this is paid. I am sure a lot more than I am! Words fail me, these people on the council shouldn’t be allowed near anything or more importantly taxpayer’s money.
great comments , and spot on , they never wanted this to be used for a port , which incidently concreted over a vast swathe of the coastline . no other council in the country would have missed an oppotunity like this for a working port , now the arts on the other hand ?
How did the port make a £18.7 million pound loss in 12 years, they obviously weren’t maintaining the equipment as it is going to cost a fortune to attract a new operator due to all the work required. They have Brett’s and 2 wind farm operators using the port land. There must be some very odd accounting practices going on or they have been paying a great many staff a great deal of money for twiddling their thumbs for 12 years.
A loss of £18.7m excluding harbour income? Hang on, what sort of accounting is that? How can you exclude income? Any business would make a loss if you excluded its sales….
Anything to make the agenda they wish to push seem as bad as possible, in this case it’ll be wanting to put previous administrations in as bad a light as possible.
But of course TDC must be swimming in cash as it has forgone the portion of council tax previously paid by some on benefits, though the amount given away has not to my memory been stated.
Maybe the containers are so they can hide in them?
Is this what the T.D.C. Blue Sky Thinking event came up with as the bag of a fag packet reserve idea if the Green Campus falls through?
Maybe these containers could be fitted out to house dinghy riders and, an express asylum refusal and export office established?