Report on Town Hall meeting 1 November 2006
Well, the Town Hall meeting was quite interesting. I would say that around 120 people turned up to hear the presentations there (including mine - I made a short report on the History Group of the Gateway Town group, which I left recently to plough my own furrow).
Fraser Rush and James Chubb made a very enthusiastic presentation about East Devon's plans for Seaton Marshes. At the moment, East Devon owns about 50 acres spread between Seaton and Colyton but it hopes to develop the entire site from the mouth of the Axe to the A3052 - some 250 acres. All looks lovely. They made a lot of the increase in visitors - another 30,000 per year, they projected. And they said that a lot of these visitors would be "extended stay". Ah, there's the problem ...
If we have only around 150 tourist beds in the town (and that is probably an overestimate on my part) then, as compared to more than 600 at the moment - where will these tourists stay? You guessed it - Sidmouth and Lyme Regis. A 20 mile round trip or a 12 mile round trip - and who gets the benefit ... right!
And what about "green transport" - if few of these visitors can stay they will just add to the traffic on our roads, pay their entrance fee to the marshes, have a good look round, maybe take a trip on the tram and after that, what? Off they go. Of course, they could shop in all the new shops or perhaps take a walk around our new housing estate. Shops like they have at home, houses like they have at home.
Meanwhile, there we are - no tourist beds, no community centre and a spanking new mega-marsh.
I'd quite like a new mega-marsh. But I'd also like a community centre and tourist accommodation. Are we getting one and not the others?
posted by Fighting for East Devon's future @ 6:21 pm
3 Comments:
If this is an argument for the retention of the holiday camp in its present form it cannot succeed. The sort of visitors who may be attracted by the Megamarsh will not choose the type of accommodation available at the camp. If there is future demand for additional accommodation I would expect local providers to expand and new providers to be encouraged into the business. The operators of the camp complain elsewhere that the terms of their lease inhibit any new investment. This must have been known to them when they signed up and it follows that it was never their intention to develop or invest in the business. The logic of capitalism is that a stagnant business model will always fail.
What we should be arguing for is that a significant portion of the land presently designated as employment land should be retained for that purpose and marketed to accommodation providers with the enterprise and imagination to cater for the higher spending and environmentally conscious visitors who could be attracted by the Jurassic Coast and the Megamarsh. It may well be that new facilities would include some of the services which the community currently purchases from the holiday camp but it would be unwise to rely on that. Far better to campaign for the public provision of community services presently obtained from the camp. Section 106 money alone could not finance this and the community must be prepared to pay its share upfront and at point of use.
I wonder how communard knows that the visitors attracted by the megamarsh would not choose the type of accommodation available at the holiday camp? As one of the people attracted to Seaton by its exisiting marshes I can tell you its just the type of accommodation that some birders choose. But perhaps "communard" is actually the developers agent looking only at what profit they can make?
Of course it would be wonderful if a significant portion of the development land was used for new high class tourist accommodation and community facilities. If the developer wants to provide these first I'm sure any subsequent proposals would be looked on far more favourably. But as it stands it's all take, take, take.
Perhaps you both could agree on another scenario:
The fact that the signet development will remove the majority of tourist accommodation available leaves the megamarsh project looking like a tail looking for a dog.
It is conceivable that instead of the land being redeveloped for housing and 2 sheds, it could be primarily a tourist/community hub with a much larger heritage centre than that proposed by the signet plan.
It would be in the megamarsh project teams interest to make a decision about the how they view the tourist issue working with and without the "masterplan" rather than blithely sit pat and pretend its something for somebody else.
They say they forsee lots of tourists coming to see their site, but are silent on where said visitors will be staying....maybe we could have 450 houses built for letting only ;0)
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