Standing up For Sandgate Escarpment

Speech to Development Control Committee speaking against Y11/0137/SH: Land Adjoining Sir John Moore Barracks, Military Road, Sandgate, Kent:

"Outline application for the erection of 5 detached houses, including details of layout, scale and access, together with the change of use and conversion of Martello Tower 6 to a residential holiday let and Martello Tower 7 and adjacent underground water tank to a dwelling, together with associated access road and engineering works, parking, landscaping and ancillary outbuilding to serve Martello Tower 6."

Good evening Councillors.

Normally, an application for 5 luxury houses in woodland above Sandgate would surely be rejected out of hand.

It is only being discussed as "Enabling Development" for the aim of renovating Martello Towers 6 & 7. For that to be acceptable, you have to be sure that:

• The trade-off it involves is worth having;
• There are no other funding options;
• It definitely secures the target of the enabling development.

There are lots of objections to this application, most of which are in your report. But in my very limited time I will focus on those points.

The Escarpment woodland stretches above Sandgate to Military Road. It is well used and much loved and used as Rosemary Saunders has outlined.

The key English Heritage test of enabling development is that "The public benefit of securing the future of the significant place through such enabling development decisively outweighs the disbenefits of breaching other public policies."

You should reject this development if you do not think the further development of the escarpment is a price worth paying. Sandgate Parish Council, the Sandgate Society and Sandgate residents do not believe it is a price worth paying.

On page 23 of your report English Heritage misunderstand the reason for the failure of a previous application to the Heritage Lottery Fund.

A local charity made an application to the Lottery for a grant to buy and develop the Towers for community use. The bid was rejected, but NOT on the grounds suggested.

The bid was unsuccessful not because they did not consider it a worthy scheme, but because they questioned the ability of a small charity to deliver a million pound project.

A different bid with different partners may have a different outcome. Other avenues of funding have NOT been exhausted.

You should reject this development if you think the future of the towers could be secured through different funding. The outcome of the previous funding bid is actually proof that such funding may be available.

Finally, this is not an application to build and sell 5 houses to renovate 2 Martello Towers. Look at the funding details given in section 1.9 on page 6 of the report.

This is an application to get Planning Permission to build 5 houses where you usually couldn't, sell that land, with the income from that build an access road and partially renovate one tower, sell that for development as a dwelling, and then partially renovate the second tower, but not as far as to a "usable" condition.

What could possibly go wrong?

With so many ifs, buts & maybes it is entirely possible to see cost overruns on building access roads and putting in services - in a known landslip area - lead to funds running out.

The net outcome could be 5 luxury houses built in woodland outside usual policy and against the wishes of local people, a new access road driven through the escarpment, one tower sold off and no money to do any works to the last tower.

It's a gamble. If it's not sure the enabling development will achieve its stated aims then the enabling development should be rejected.

Sandgate loves its history, and its green spaces. It loves them equally. Please don't sacrifice one for the other: we want both, and there are still ways to have both. Please, for Sandgate, vote against the development of the Escarpment, and vote against this application.

Thank you.