A proposal by Ramsgate Town Council to fund free Saturday parking at the Royal Harbour Multi-Storey Car Park on Leopold Street has been thwarted due to the cost.
The aim was to support local businesses and encourage more people to visit the town centre with traders saying free parking in the past made a real difference to their business. Many reported higher footfall and better trading on Saturdays when free parking was available.
However, the cost of providing free parking for a year on Saturdays is estimated at around £50,000 – the amount Thanet District Council would lose in income. This is a significant sum for the Town Council to pay for 52 Saturdays, and Thanet District Council cannot absorb this loss without compensation.
Because of these financial pressures, Ramsgate Town Council will not be progressing the idea at this time, although it may be reconsidered in the future.
Residents and visitors are reminded that there is free parking every Saturday at Cannon Road Car Park. Ramsgate Town Council encourages everyone to take advantage of this and continue supporting local businesses.
50k to invest in out failing town centre.. of course its too much effort and cost..
More shops will thrive if more people go there, therefore bringing in more income for the council! The usual short-sightedness.
Agreed and maybe trial it on one Saturday every month to prove your point
Don’t forget there is already free Saturday parking at Cannon Road which is a short walk to the town centre.
why do thanet council never mention the vast sums of money they collect from the wind farm companies ? every time you see a boat going in and out of ramsgate harbour to support the wind farms , they collect payments . i wonder where all of this money goes ?
nb , perhaps i should have said ramsgate council collects this money ? either way someone is having it
No Ramsgate does NOT get the harbour dues. The Harbour is owned by TDC.
Mr Blind is correct, for sometime Cannon Road has been free on Saturdays, but it does require a bit of local knowledge and a bit of effort to park your vehicle and walk a short distance to the high street.
As for PC and Samantha, I hate to get into mansplaining mode, but you don’t seem to know how local govt finance works.
Ramsgate Town Council gets its income from Council tax via what is known as a precept on the general council tax bill.This is worked out by multiplying the tax base (the amount a £1 precept would fetch over the council area by the number of dwellings. Broadstairs has a higher tax bas because it has more higher value properties and fewer discounts for those on council tax benefit).The other income it might have is from investments and rents on land it might own.
Business owners might pay business rates, but this is subject to rate relief and in any case is paid to the govt with a slice going to District and County if they are lucky.
So if more people visit the shops, the business owners benefit, and so do any freeholders who own those shops, because they can charge more rent. If the rental value of the shop rises, the rateable value might increase, but again only HMG,TDC, and KCC benefit.
Ah! but you say the business owners might be locals and they pay council tax,so RTC are getting a contribution from them.Possibly, but not necssarily and the link is anyway tenuous.As the freeholders they could literally live in Timbuctoo, and benefit from a general uplift from business.
In effect you are expecting local tax payers to benefit visitors and motorists, who might be a whole lot wealthier than them.This also applies to the provision pf public toilets, as locals who may or may not benefit,subsidise the comfort of the likes of Checksfield, irrespective of the wealth of the locals.
Who is the villain in all this?.Well the freeholders who have done bugger all, except allow their properties to deteriorate,and TDC who come up with these outlandish valuations, without any transparency.This has happened before, because RTC did subsidise Leopold Street a few years ago, and stopped because TDC kept upping the cost.
TDC are always looking to dip their hands into the parish precept to keep their home fires burning without offering much in exchange, which is why we we where we are.
Until there is local devolution this state of affairs will continue to exist.
Oh, I forgot you were an expert at absolutely everything. How’s your jigsaw puzzle coming along?
Yes you forgot the expert and rambled on again!
The reason I can comment with some accuracy is that I read a fair bit and those gives me data.You don’t and get narky when you get pulled up short as usual.
Mr Nokes – it depends on what you read as too accuracy acquired knowledge. Also, I note your manners have not improved eg Mr Checksfield and just his surname!
When someone talks rot and is often narky and unpleasant specially to women he should expect to be brought up short.Often people sound off displaying their prejudices rather than any knowledge of the world and they then start pontificating about manners and will get short shrift from me.
“Fedup B ” -Peter Checksfield does not deserve to be addressed politely. Perhaps “Fedup B” didn’t read my earlier comment where I informed him/her that Checksfield has called me a “Welsh whore” on a comments thread here- an example of simultaneous racism and misogyny.
Rees, when are you going to say something positive about Ramsgate?
I do.
Perhaps the right honourable gentleman can now find the time to read about the new Ramsgate Thrift Store in the old HSBC building, the new book charting the history of central Ramsgate streets, and the successful first week for security officers on patrol in Ramsgate. Then say something encouraging and positive about them.
I did.
Yes, I am very encouraged and hope that better times for Ramsgate are around the corner.
Don’t tell me, tell the people in the articles.
Good lad.
RTC receives not money from the wind farm, neither does TDC except for any rent Vattenfall pay in the harbour,no the Crown Estates picks up the cash, and the monarch gets 15% of that as part of his sovereign grant.There, we loyal subjects, are making sure the king is not short of a few quid.
As for TDC, they might or might not lose a bit of revenue, but neither do they have to check tickets on a Saturday, and anyone paying a weekly fee to park at Leopold Street will not be getting a refund, so it’s swings and roundabouts for TDC.
We also have to think about opportunity costs.What else could RTC do with £50k that might do more for the community, such as removing all that litter, weeds and dog muck people bang on about,or pay for an extra security guard, or buy one of those run down shops and turn it into something useful.
You see the more you think about it, the more it makes no sense to hand TDC a chunk of money for doing nothing.
Signs saying where to park for free and a local van giving free teas and coffees there? Welcome to ramsgate
Ah bless you Sharon! On the side of the angels as always.
I wonder what the revenue split is between residents and off-island visitors…
Free parking for residents could be a happy compromise,
£50k a year for 52 Saturdays …£961 each Saturday …seriously that’s what the car park earns on average a Saturday …find that hard to believe 🤔
That equates to 141 cars staying avg 4 hours paying £6.80 each …seriously?!!
I copied-and-pasted the above from Facebook, but is this person correct in his sums, and that the £50k is just a lie?
perhaps he can explain why the crown estates pick up all this money from the windfarms , that said – do the crown estates pay for the upkeep and maintainence of ramsgate harbour ? or is that just another redirection of wealth ?
The crown estates own the seabed out as far as 12nm.Georgelll handed over the ownership of what is now the crown estates and received an annual payment in return.After the hoo hah over whose going to pay for the repairs to Windsor castle after the fire (EllR called it the annus horriblis if you recall , and I am not going to explain where she got that expression from, except to point you to Wolfe and the capture of Quebec).Anyway a nifty deal was done on behalf of the Sovereign to do away with need for an annual vote, where politicians grandstand about the cost of the royal family, whereby the took a cut of crown estate’s profits.Thise profits thanks to informs etc have done rather well, but the % given to the king has not dropped accordingly, so make of that what you will.No,the Royal Harbour is owned by TDC and the boat owners and council tax payers pay for the maintenance.
Mr Checksfield is making my point about TDC’S wonky economics on the funding of Leopold Street car park.As always they are chiselling the Parishes, and I wish this everlastingly lazy government would get off its backside and get rid of them and their mean spirited ways.
Only needed to be free parking for the Christmas period any other time it would be full of day trippers.