7 October 2009Added Picture...and no, its not 10 Downing Street.
A short walk to M&S....
taking the scenic route!
We have all seen how exasperated our colleague Cllr Roger Walkden is at the moment with this section 215 situation. Roger discovered, belatedly, that there was in fact a system in place that could force absentee landlords to rally up and improve their awful properties and lets face it, Dover has lots of them. This discovery has excited Roger who is a long time campaigner to try and improve Dover's palatability to the outside visitor, to the tourist. The problem is... very few have rallied to Roger's cry for an advancing push so that some of these properties can be improved to the greater good of all. By way of helping this along, and although with a slightly different remit, in that we are showing shops not private dwellings, we nevertheless still show some of the dire straights we are experiencing visually everyday. The walk from the Cruise terminal fills the individual tripper with horror.
I did this walk probably roughly two years ago. It attracted the wrong type of headlines in the newspapers, and indeed Paul Watkins himself, leader of the DDC, expressed a level of "unhappiness" at the fact that we published some awful pictures of Dover that can be seen around the world. Our pictures showed the desolation experienced by many living around the St James DTIZ area. But, it must be remembered, we are/were simply only recording what was there.
Since then nothing at all has changed for the better. The situation generally with the old crumbling buildings is much the same, but with this dismal recession we are experiencing, the shop closures have become worse. Pubs are shutting or falling into disrepair and the air of delapidation and gloom spreads like a new 21st century malaise.
So when I met Roger Walkden at the recent Neighbourhood Forum meeting at the Town Council offices, he was expressing much excitement that he had at last found a way of injecting some life into our delapidated building problem. He had discovered section 215. A legal tool to force landlords to do up their properties. But his rallying cry has since fallen on deaf ears. Fallen on the deaf ears of a community and a council that has accepted the state of these decaying ruins as the norm, and long since given up the fight.
The only thing that's changed in inner Dover since I made my last recorded walk is this notice board for the DDC telling us all is in hand...we are on our way to REGENERATION. These notices are looked upon with deep deep cynicism by a local population that reads this stuff and sees nothing at all happening...as we have seen expressed on doverforum all too often, and for all too many years.
I read in one of the local papers today oct 8, in an article by forumite Kathy Bailes, that an announcement of major proportion is to be made soon, so sayeth Cllr Frederick Scales, DDC Cabinet member. My advice to fellow Dovorians is this, if the past sabre rattlings of promised advancements are anything to go by...Dont go holding your breath!
Incidently: re picture 5..Three Cooks. How come a shop situated in the Market Square of a famous town like this, still hasnt been re-occupied in several years?? whats going on there!!?
PaulB
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