02 03

Registered Office: 128 Southwark Street, London SE1 0SW, phone
020 7981 2800, fax 020 7981 2899.
e-mail info@cpre.org.uk http://www.cpre.org.uk or Thanet branch

1. Members present: Mr Mairs, Chairman; Dr Cohen, Vice-chairman; Mr Bridge, Mrs Cohen, Dr Quested and Mr Villette.

2. Minutes of the last meeting: Mr Mairs apologised for the fact that he had been too busy to produce minutes from the 31 January meeting. These would, however, be produced before the next meeting.

3. Apologies: were received from Dr Cooper, Dr and Mrs Neden and Mrs Randall.

4. Matters arising: new Treasurer Mr Bridge received a £57 cheque from Dr Cohen to be placed into a so-called conference account this sum represented the entire assets of CPRE Thanet.

Mr Mairs reported that CPRE Kent Director Dr Hilary Newport had informed him that no volunteers were available to help with secretarial work, ie taking the minutes at meetings, as had been requested. She suggested asking other members across the island if they might be interested. Mmmmm.

St Lawrence College has applied to build on the ‘onion field’ within its grounds. It was apparent to the meeting that Thanet council officers had in fact done a good job in assessing the application and recommending refusal, as doing otherwise would set a dangerous precedent. We looked forward to the planning committee’s decision with interest.

Dr Quested and Mr Villette asked about the apparent road widening at Manston Court Road and wondered if it might be part of the spatial development scheme planned for the area. Mr Mairs said he would make the relevant enquiries [it is in fact work for a water mains].

Mr Bridge has a copy of the Environmental Impact Assessment for the dualling of the East Kent Access Road between Pfizer and Ebbsfleet he will report on it at a future meeting.

Thanet Local Plan Review – Strategic Environmental Assessment: much of the evening was spent looking at this document, which was brought to the meeting by Mr Bridge. Sadly, not much need be said about it, as it was unanimously agreed that Thanet District Council had produced a time-consuming and, more importantly, unworkable document that had been wrongly applied to the procedure it was meant to meant to tackle. Despite this, members felt working through the document had been worthwhile, if only because it gave an idea of the incompetence we’re all up against.