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Posted by Anonymous to swanage view
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Caravan Park
What on earth is Swanage Town Council doing trying to make money out of a caravan park? Do they not remember that they could not even successfully run the ice cream kiosks on the beach (closed for lunch and at Bank Holidays)? The visitor centre losses (also closed for lunch)? The Station Yard fiasco? Having to charge for toilets? Extortionate car parking fees- where does all that money go?If caravan parks are so good, why all the licensing and planning restrictions on the existing ones?The STC caravan park will not be the success it could be in private hands, and may well turn out to be at best a poor investment but probably a liability to the people of Swanage. This piece of family silver should be sold off immediately.
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Posted by Anonymous to swanage view at 4/13/2005 11:58:26 AM
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Posted by Anonymous to swanage view
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13 comments:
Stone me! Sounds like you have an interest?
Dancing Ledge
No commercial interest DL, but I hate the hypocrisy. The Town Council run around trying to prevent anyone getting on, then open a restaurant. What next, an old peoples home on some council land? They could slip through the planning permission easily enough. So the same people who turn down holiday chalets and a sports centre on the old grammar school site run the competition. Why is there only one Monopolies Commission?
If anon had taken the trouble to read the councils accounts before leaping in he would know that the caravan site and car parks make a large net contribution to the councils income.
We need more businesses run for the general good not less. Swanage has lost almost all of its hotels because it made business sense to turn them into retirement homes then flats. If the caravan site was sold off how long would it be before a company with the resources to take on PDC wanted to build on it, regardless of the geological problems?
we ate there at the week end, we wont be goin back
All business is run for the public good, the problem is when the Public sector gets involved it is generally run inefficiently. Good buy and R.I.P. MG Rover, no more Public money please. There is one post that should be filled in Swanage from the public sector, a Tourism Officer. His brief should be to help provide an environment in which the private sector can flourish, like a one man Carnival Committee operating all year around.
The Broad Road car park is a massive invasion into the sacrosanct Downs. Incredibly it follows the topography instead of being cut in so that the cars are hidden! If SWT really cared they would grass it over. Sell off the Caravan Park and use the money on a 30m pool for the local children. If the area can be built on, then let the Council sell it off for that purpose and have a 50+m pool for the kids.
I am sick of reading about how much Swanage needs a swimming pool. There are two here already and they are not exactly overused. The claim that we need one for local kids is a joke. There are about 1000 children in Swanage. Lets say a third of them want to swim once a week, thats 333 a week or 46 a day. If a pool was open from the end of school (3pm at first school) to 9 in the evening that works out at less than 8 an hour using it.
Who is going to pay the running costs? A large pool costs about £500,000 a year to operate. Do your sums. How much more council tax are you willing to pay towards that figure?
If its such a bright idea why have we never had a private company wanting to build a 30 metre pool here? Some contributors to this blog seem to imagine they are the answer to all our problems.
So are the indoor and outdoor bowls greens net contributors?
For me this is a matter of civic responsibility and residents esteem that a the Town be provided with a proper sports centre. Even if this is financially difficult at present, at least we should aspire to one. And a centre for the arts if you like.
I understand the local shooting club is to be kicked out by the Council to make way for ten pin bowling at the site.
History repeats itself. There used to be a small bore rifle club which used a range under the TA drill hall which stood where there is now a block of flats next to the British Legion. Looking back its amazing how long the militatisation of the nation lingered after 1945 but I suppose it gave enthusiasts a harmless hobby before Texan style gun nuts came on the scene and destroyed the innocence of the pursuit... Ah, those arcadian days when Sunday mornings echoed to the distant sound of rifle fire.
Yet shooting is an Olympic sport, whereas ten pin bowling.....then again, darts has now been recognised as a 'sport'... what hope is there?
What... ten pin bowling in Swanage? What next, "Swanage Welcomes Camper Vans" signs?
...and don't forget it will soon be earning enough money "...to do away with the (local) council tax..." (Tony Miller)
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