Is the Wetlands Nature Reserve dependent on a successful Liatris planning application?
Read below and decide for yourself.
If you belong to EDDC, it can stand alone. HOWEVER:
if the Liatris planning application is NOT successful:
1. EDDC will lose the main southern entrance route to the extended marshes. The Seaton entrance has a problem because the tramway runs all along it. You therefore have to put a bridge over the tramway or a tunnel under it to get people to the nature reserve. The only other alternative is for everyone –pedestrians, wheelchair users, families with young children AND cyclists to use the SUSTRANS cycle route – making it crowded, dangerous and not a cycle route. If you do not use the SUSTRANS cycle route, that leaves entry only by the two fields north of the tramway between the cycle route and the river. The field nearest the cycle route (Salter’s Field) cannot be built on as it contains the remains of the medieval salt pans and is also directly below St Gregory’s church. It is therefore of great archeological importance. The other field (24 acres) belongs to Liatris. If the Liatris planning application goes through it will form part of a “cash and land deal” (already agreed by the EDDC Executive on 15 November 2006) between EDDC and Liatris so EDDC gets the field at agricultural prices (at the moment about £3,000 per acre = £75,000) and Liatris gets the land which is currently the car park, tram terminus and derelict Youth Centre. If the planning application does not go through and Liatris refuses to sell the land to EDDC they will probably then have to compulsorily purchase it. This will take time and mean that until the compulsory purchase is done the only route into the reserve will be the SUSTRANS cycle route.
2. There will be no shop, no interpretation facility and no parking on the extended nature reserve at the Seaton end. EDDC are relying on having these facilities in the new Jurassic Coast Visitor Centre as part of the Liatris plan. If the Liatris planning application is not successful the only option would be to build the Visitor Centre on what is currently the EDDC car park. This is impossible as a Visitor Centre needs parking but there would be no parking as you would have built on the car park!
3. EDDC say that the new nature reserve can go ahead without Liatris money. However, in the Minutes of the Executive Board of
“Members confirm their resolution to make available a site for the Seaton Gateway Visitor Centre and for the site to be available at the same time as the development”.
“It is the intention of the developer to make a significant financial contribution to meet the anticipated cost of land acquisition to deliver the extended wetlands marshes as part of the anticipated Section 106 agreement”.
“Support in principle be given to releasing funds for the programme of land acquisition in advance of any planning application through the capital programme”.
In other words: The Visitor Centre cannot happen unless the Liatris planning application is successful. EDDC is using money they currently have to purchase land they do not own in anticipation of receiving money from the developer. There appears to be no contingency for what happens if the Liatris planning application is not successful.
Now convince me that the Wetlands and the Liatris planning application are NOT linked and that the cost is NOT our community facilities.
How can you convince me? EDDC can put out a press release saying that, due to enormous adverse public reaction in Seaton, they have decided NOT to use developer money for the Wetlands Nature Reserve project and that the money that had been earmarked from the developer’s Section 106 contributions will be used to provide new community facilities and replace or enhance those about to be lost when the holiday village is demolished.
Chances of this happening: ZERO.
posted by Fighting for East Devon's future @ 9:57 am
9 Comments:
Of course the wetlands centre is dependent on Liatris
The promotion of the Wetlands centre at this point is a cynical EDDC marketing ploy.
Next week EDDC will issue a press release saying that 95% of people who visited the exhibition were in favour of the wetlands proposal.
A month later EDDC Councillors will be be given a report saying that the wetlands has massive support in Seaton even through it is accepted that the Liatris development is needed to pay for it. A month afer that the application will go to committee with a note saying that 95% of the people support the Liatris development now they know the facts
Its pure manipulation.
It's worth recording here that I pointed out that SU4S had at one stage, been smeared with the lie that we were against the marsh project. Actually we're against a marsh project being financed off the redevelopment when there is a crying need for people facilities across the town (ie at their expense). Talking with the presenters themselves, it is clear they wouldn't mind being able to have a reserve extending down to the sea...in fact one of the "live with flood" alternatives would provide for a lot more greenspace than the liatris plan.
But I worry that they've been sold a promise, and are, unwittingly or otherwise, promoting a hidden agenda.
So lets be clear:
Seaton is not against the marsh
Seaton is against the Liatris plan
Seaton is against any 106 money from that site being used to finance the marsh ahead of infrastructure in the town.
But anon might well be reporting the future press release:-(
Anonymous forgot to see that a week after the committee gets the information that 95% of people in Seaton support the Liatris development there will be an article in View from Seaton which says that research now shows that 95% of people in Seaton were against the Liatris development and thought that they had voted against it but it's too late as the application has been granted!
a wetlands centre can go ahead with or without Liatris and their land. The difference would be that there would not be much parking close to the entrance to the reserve. Visitors would need to arrive by alternative forms of transport. The reserve would be just as much use, if not more, to the wildlife but not as much of a tourist benefit for Seaton.
However if EDDC have spent money buying up land they will want to recoup that money from the developer.
The location of a classroom to the north of the reserve needs to be questioned. We should have this at the Seaton end of the site with accommodation suitable for school parties to stay in Seaton.
If visitors arrive by alternative forms of transport THEY HAVE NOWHERE TO STAY and will have to return by their alternative form of transport the same day.
Can you see them doing this when we are 30 minutes from the railway with only one bus an hour until 6 pm and when the X53 runs once an hour till 8 pm in summer and every 2 hours in winter.
You could, of course, tramp the Undercliff from Lyme BUT YOU WOULD HAVE NOWHERE TO STAY.
This is not a matter of detail, such as where people do or do stay, or where they do or do not park. As anonymous says, the whole point is how EDDC will exploit support for the wetlands. Everyone thinks it a good idea, but what worries me is the traps EDDC will set around that support
Yes, you are quite right, sometimes you can take your eye off the ball. First (and foremost) get the Liatris planning application thrown out and then start thinking about other things.
Good job I have the blog to keep me focused!
I agree entirely with your analysis, all the facets of the plan have been cleverly interwoven so that one won't stand without the other. On the cash for land issue how do you think EDDC square the deal, where on the face of it they are giving away land worth approx 1Million pounds for the priviledge of paying another £75k to the Developers. Is there no independent Auditor who monitors Councils? If there were and the proper controls were applied I think several of our worthy Council Officials would be out of a job.
They aren't giving away the larger piece of land - they will be paid for it apparently though I guess we will not be allowed to know how much. What they will give away is the income from car parking (no supermarket will countenance splitting income with a local authority) and the income from anything that is built on that site which has not already been ring-fenced as freehold land before it is sold.
I have great concers about the deal and, for example, the Visitor Centre and Town Square. Once the land is sold Liatris will effectively hold another "ransom strip" around the Visitor Centre and will also probably own the "Town Square" (a real misnomer - its a walkway between various places not a real public open space) with which they will be able to do anything in years to come.
Seaton is paying the highest of prices for EVERYTHING here both socially and economically. If anything goes wrong, the developers will just shrug their shoulders or will have sold out anyway and you can bet the main movers in EDDC will have long gone either to other local authorities or to the private sector and will have made themselves untouchable. They certainly won't be living in Seaton, that's for sure.
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