Letter to Roger Gale MP
On Monday 27 January 2003, the Save Dreamland Campaign issued a formal letter to Margate MP Roger Gale, asking for help. This is the full text of the letter, which was issued by the Campaign's Sarah Vickery.
Dear Mr Gale,
I am writing
on behalf of the Save Dreamland Campaign to voice our serious concerns about the
planned closure of Dreamland, the possible change of use of the site away from a
tourist attraction land use, and the loss of the historic Scenic Railway. I am
Vice-Chair of the Isle of Thanet Tourism Association, and proprietor of the
Shell Grotto, a Grade I listed tourist attraction in Margate, which doubles as
the Save Dreamland Campaign headquarters. Campaign membership includes local
residents, tourism businesses, Margate holidaymakers and a number of local,
national and international heritage organisations (including Margate Historical
Society, Save Britain’s Heritage and the Roller Coaster Club of Great
Britain). In all, I speak for well over 12,000 people who have signed up to the
Campaign and who do not want to lose Margate’s biggest tourist attraction and
its nationally important historic landmark.
It has been
made absolutely clear to me by the members of this Campaign that Margate cannot
survive the loss of Dreamland. It brings tens of thousands of tourists to the
town every year (a survey undertaken by Thanet District Council last year showed
that 25% of visitors to the town had visited Dreamland). The fact that the
current owner now plans to retire would seem to be the only reason why the
Council is considering changing the use of the site away from tourism. That
simply is not a good enough reason. It is not acceptable that one man’s
retirement can bring the tourist industry of a whole town to its knees.
The proposals
put forward by Stadium Developments and Jimmy Godden are not proposals for a
tourist attraction. They are for retail and leisure. As you say yourself on your
own website: “The right mix of sports, other leisure and retail outlets under
one roof could, if offered by the developer, give us the facilities that the
Town so desperately needs.” I am very concerned that you seem to be abandoning
Margate as a tourist resort, and all our members back up my concerns. There is a
very big difference in ‘leisure’ and ‘tourism’. Leisure provides, as you
rightly say, facilities for local people. Tourist attractions, on the other
hand, bring people into a town. To suggest that replacing one with another is an
opportunity is to almost completely miss the point. The Dreamland site must stay
in tourism use, or Margate’s other tourism businesses - the hotels, shops,
cafes and amusement arcades – will struggle to survive. The proposed change of
use is, in any event, contrary to the statutory development plan, and therefore
very good reasons have to be given to override the Plan. The only reason that we
have seen so far is that the site’s owner wants to retire!
Dreamland has
been progressively run down by its owner over the past few years, both in terms
of shrinking in size, and removing all the permanent family rides and replacing
them with low-budget travelling ‘white knuckle’ rides. The place has even
begun to take on a threatening atmosphere. Amusement parks operate successfully
all around the coast of Britain, in towns with much smaller tourist trade than
Margate. You only have to look across the Thames Estuary to Adventure Island
amusement park at Southend-on-Sea. This park has been the focus of the town’s
regeneration over the past seven or eight years. What Southend and Adventure
Island (under the excellent management of owner Phillip Miller) has achieved is
really outstanding, and can only be fully appreciated if you know what Southend
was like as recently as the mid-1990s. The park now looks fantastic, and draws
hundreds of thousands of people to the resort every year. Representatives of the
Save Dreamland Campaign would be more than happy to accompany you on a visit to
Southend to see how this has happened and the lessons that can be learnt for
Margate.
Then there is
the small matter of the Grade II listed Scenic Railway. As the oldest operating
roller coaster in the United Kingdom, and one of only two surviving scenic
railways (the only one surviving completely intact and unaltered), this really
is a national treasure. It is something the resort should be proud of, not
something that should be demolished. I would strongly recommend that you read
the report prepared by Save Dreamland Campaign leader Nick Laister in 2001,
which he submitted to English Heritage and which resulted in the ride being
listed. The report can be downloaded from the Campaign website: www.savedreamland.co.uk
in either ‘pdf’ or Microsoft Word format form. I think the report
demonstrates that to lose this ride is simply not an option. Moving it would be
almost as bad as demolishing it: listed structures like this are important
partly due to their historical associations with a town; the Scenic Railway to
many people is Margate. To move it would lose much of what makes it special. And
its future would no longer be protected in a new location (assuming one could
ever be found).
Nick Laister,
who is not only our campaign leader, but also a planning consultant who
specialises in planning for tourism, has pointed out to me some key provisions
within PPG15 (government policy on listed buildings). There are several policies
of relevance to this case and these are presented in more detail on the
‘Frequently Asked Questions’ page of the abovementioned Campaign website.
Paragraph 3.19 of PPG15 states that listed building consent for demolition
should not be granted unless the authority (or the Secretary of State) is
satisfied that real efforts have been made without success to continue the
present use. This should include: "the offer of the unrestricted freehold
of the building on the open market at a realistic price reflecting the
building's condition". Therefore if another operator is prepared to acquire
some, or all, of Dreamland and continue to operate the park and the Scenic
Railway, there is no justification in planning policy terms for its demolition
and redevelopment. We have seen no evidence that the freehold of the site has
been offered. It concerns us greatly that the council seems to have
‘leapfrogged’ that stage of the process and is now looking at redevelopment
options. They are even consulting on redevelopment options before this first
stage – the marketing of the unrestricted freehold – has been undertaken.
It also seems
to us that this forthcoming consultation – to be funded by the developer –
is predicated on the fact that the site is not going to remain as an amusement
park because it isn’t viable, and that change of use to retail or leisure
(both equally inappropriate for the site) is going to happen. The consultation
should aim to primarily find out whether local residents, businesses and the
town’s visitors (for that is what the tourism industry relies upon) actually
want to see the site change from being a visitor attraction to a retail or
leisure land use.
You can see
that we have a number of extremely serious concerns, and much of what Council
leaders are saying is quite simply wrong. We really do feel that there is nobody
in the Council who is fighting our corner - fighting for tourism. We are
therefore putting our faith in you. As a matter of urgency, Nick Laister and I
would like to meet with you (ideally with some senior representatives of the
council) to see why the above points do not seem to have been considered to
date, and how they are now going to be taken into account. We are extremely
worried about the devastating effect the closure of Dreamland and the demolition
of the Scenic Railway will have on Margate as a seaside resort. Please, Mr Gale,
do not turn your back on tourism.
I look
forward to hearing from you as soon as possible.
Sarah Vickery
Save Dreamland Campaign
The Shell Grotto
Grotto Hill
Margate
Kent
CT9 2BU
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