The Trust’s Regeneration Plan for the Basin in 2013

The Regeneration Plan for Faversham Creek Basin

has not really changed since 2013

Read how we saw the Bridge then

Summary

Since 2011 the Faversham Creek Trust has been working towards a regeneration plan that focuses on the upper part of Faversham Creek above the Brents Swing Bridge. The plan was first submitted to the Local Plan forum of the Creek Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group in November 2012. What appears here is a brief overview, revised for submission to the Faversham Town Council in November 2013.

We believe there is a unique opportunity for change in the centre of this historic town with significant economic and social benefits for residents and visitors alike. Our plan is based on the creation of a viable maritime economic facility, with workshops, moorings and a training school to serve the existing fleet of traditional vessels in the Thames Estuary.

The plan will be a team effort, with combined effort from several stakeholders including a charitable trust, a community association, identified private investors, and local and regional authorities.

The key elements

1. The regeneration of Ordnance Wharf as a single-storey marine workshop with office and community centre with access from Flood Lane, in conformity with the current local plan, the existing conservation area, and the plan now under preparation by the Brents Community Association. A potential purchaser has been confirmed subject to Ordnance Wharf not being re- zoned for housing. Implementation mid-2015.

2. The existing restored Purifier Building to be a training centre for students and apprentices to be run in conjunction with the Ordnance Wharf workshop. The five year plan envisages 18 students with an eventual capacity for 36 students per year. Implementation late 2015. There are also two specialist workshop units and a room for community activities.

3. The restoration of the BMM Weston Creek frontage outside the existing car park with the co- operation of the owner, on a long lease in exchange for the restoration cost. The resulting wharf (with back filling of a new piled frontage from the waterside) will provide moorings for up to ten sailing barges and smacks and a green amenity space along the current footpath. A private company will meet the cost of the operation to commence when the KCC has replaced the current swing bridge.

4. The replacement of the existing swing bridge by a new, opening bridge – by Kent County Council as a collaborative project in partnership with the Borough Council and the Town Council.

5. The repair or replacement of the sluice gates by Medway Ports and their subsequent management and dredging by the Faversham Creek Trust under licence by the authority.

The Lifting Bridge opening at High Tide for an awaiting barge, with another waiting to come out.

These objectives are in line with feedback received from the May 2012 Creek Neighbourhood Plan exhibition and the June 2013 exhibition, and also with feedback from the Urban Initiatives consultation in 2009. They conform to Neighbourhood Plan objectives 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 11, 13, 15.

The benefits

The benefits arising from the regeneration are:

1. Economic: the generation of new business turnover in marine workshops, training school and mooring fees, with a total annual value of £425,000 excluding indirect benefits.
2. Job creation: the plan will create at least 50 new jobs including students and apprentices, but excluding tourism spin-off related employment in the town.
3. Social: the regeneration of the Creek basin would remove an eyesore from the centre of the town. It replaces a derelict and unsafe area adjoining a public footpath by a safe waterfront and public space with a view over barges and the town skyline. The repaired or replaced sluice gates would permit water retention in the basin and therefore a safe water area for community activities, sea scouts and sail training not normally available in a tidal creek.
4. Heritage: the plan as a whole provides a significant location in the Purifier Building and Ordnance Wharf workshops for a living maritime heritage centre where schoolchildren and visitors to the town can see shipwrights at work and engage with Faversham’s history.
5. Visitor numbers: the annual number of visitors to Faversham (15,000 in 2011) would rise by at least 25% as a consequence of a revitalised basin. The experience of Maldon with its smaller resident population but a fleet of ten Thames Barges and 30,000 visitors supports this contention.

Implementation

We envisage that construction could begin in 2015, preceded by a planning application in 2014. The continued commitment of the KCC to a working bridge to the basin and confirmation of the existing zoning are key conditions to the success of the plan.

Board of Trustees, Faversham Creek Trust – 25 November 2013

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Thai students visit the Purifier

A group of language students from Thailand visited the Purifier Building today, and met our Shipwrights Simon Grillet and Alan Thorne.

They are scholarship students sponsored by the Thai Govt. They come from all over Thailand and are put into competitions by their schools, usually eventually being international olympiad medal winners in maths and physics. Their govt then pays for them to be educated in Europe or the US and they are contracted to return to work for their country for twice as long as they have been educated. So the Thai govt gets 20 years of work from top brains.

Our Regeneration Plan for Faversham Creek Basin

Summary 

Since 2011 the Faversham Creek Trust has been working towards a regeneration plan that focuses on the upper part of Faversham Creek, the Basin above the Brents Swing Bridge. This plan is an updated version of the plan first submitted to the Stakeholder Workshop of the Creek Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group in November 2012, and then to Faversham Town Council in November 2013.

We believe there is a unique opportunity for restoration and development in the centre of this historic town with significant economic and social benefits for residents and visitors alike. Our plan is based on the creation of a viable maritime economic facility, with workshops, moorings and a training school to serve the existing fleet of traditional vessels in the Thames Estuary.

This plan, which now has backing from Swale Borough Council and Faversham Town Council,  will integrate the effort of several stakeholders including a charitable trust, a community association, identified private investors, and regional authorities.

The Key Elements

The replacement of the existing swing bridge by a new swing bridge – by Kent County Council as a collaborative project in partnership with the Borough Council, the Town Council and this Trust. This is the key to the Basin, and the Trust actively supports the public subscription funding opportunity that has been initiated by KCC to ensure that the bridge opens rather then remain a fixed bridge.  

The regeneration of Ordnance Wharf as a maritime workshop, small boat yard and community centre, with access from Flood Lane, in conformity with the current local plan, the existing conservation area, and the plan now under preparation by the Brents Community Association. A potential purchaser has been confirmed subject to Ordnance Wharf not being re- zoned for housing. Implementation mid-2015.

The Restored Purifier Building to be a training centre for students and apprentices to be run in conjunction with the Ordnance Wharf workshop. The five year plan envisages 18 students with an eventual capacity for 36 students per year. Implementation late 2015. There are also two specialist workshop units and a room for community activities.

The restoration of the BMM Weston Creek frontage outside the existing car park with the co- operation of the owner. The resulting wharf will provide moorings for up to ten sailing barges and smacks and a green amenity space along the current footpath. A Community Interest company will manage the operation, when KCC has replaced the current swing bridge.

The repair or replacement of the sluice gates by Peel Ports and their subsequent management, in conjunction with the operation of the new swing bridge.

Dredging of the Basin and the Creek by the Faversham Creek Navigation Company, a new Community Interest Company. A Maintenance Dredging licence has already been issued by Peel Ports, for the creek downstream from the bridge.

For the Basin, a Capital Dredging licence has been applied for,  to the Marine Management Organisation. This involves negotiation with the Environment Agency, Natural England, Peel Ports and other agencies who look after the waterbodies and the environment in the UK.

All these objectives are in line with feedback received from all the Neighbourhood Plan exhibitions and they also conform to the relevant Neighbourhood Plan Objectives.

The Benefits

The benefits arising from this regeneration are comprehensive:

Economic: the generation of new business turnover in marine workshops, training school and mooring fees, with a total annual value of around £500,000 excluding indirect benefits.

Job creation: the plan will create at least 50 new jobs including students and apprentices, but excluding tourism spin-off related employment in the town.

Social: the regeneration of the Creek basin would remove an eyesore from the centre of the town. It replaces a derelict and unsafe area adjoining a public footpath, by a safe waterfront and public space with a view over barges and the town skyline. The Gates would permit water retention in the basin and therefore a safe water area for community activities, sea scouts and sail training not normally available in a tidal creek. 

Heritage: the plan as a whole provides a significant location in the Purifier Building and Ordnance Wharf workshops for a living maritime heritage centre where schoolchildren and visitors to the town can see shipwrights at work and engage with Faversham’s history.

Visitor numbers: the annual number of visitors to Faversham (15,000 in 2011) would rise by at least 25% as a consequence of a revitalised basin. The experience of Maldon with its smaller resident population but a fleet of ten Thames Barges and 30,000 visitors supports this contention.

Implementation

The future of the Basin is entirely dependant upon the continued commitment of KCC, SBC and the Town Council, to an Opening Bridge and Gates. That policy and financial commitment, along with public subscription to the Bridge Fund, is currently the main focus of the Faversham Creek Trust, to ensure that the plans for the Basin are realised, for the benefit of all.

 

Boatbuilding and Joinery in the Purifier

Simon Grillet is progressing with setting up the Mayhi ready for the first two apprentices to start soon. Here, Simon is transferring the complex shape of the stern frame onto a jig for laminating the frame, which cannot be steamed into place, like the others, due to its compound curves; not a task for an apprentice. In this way the tooling and the course are being developed to suit the level of apprentices that will eventually take their City & Guilds at the end of their course.

The keel has already been laminated, allowing the building jig, the moulds, around which the planking will be fitted, to be assembled ready for the apprentices to start planking. At the end of their course, they will be in a position to set up the frames for the next course.

 

The course is as much about learning to use the tools and machinery as it is about the process of building a boat. Due to the continuously changing layout of a boatbuilding shed, depending on what is being worked on, machinery has to be easy to move.

Upstairs, Alan Thorne has turned his hand to making all the windows for the Purifier. They will be double glazed, some with opening lights, and fitted from inside behind the original cast iron frames. Painted the same colour, Green, they should hardly detract from the original Victorian industrial windows.

 

 

Local Artists showing in the Purifier this weekend

Faversham Creek Trust is really delighted to host a show by ‘Diversi’, a group of local artists, as part of the East Kent Artists Open Studios 2014.

The Trust’s Purifier Building at Morrisons on the creekside will be open each Saturday and Sunday from 11 to 5pm for all three weekends starting 18/19 October through till 1/2 November.

The artists are Susanna Rosti Rossini, Siobhan Timoney and Kim Barnicott from Faversham, Pat Wilson Smith from Canterbury, and Laurie Harpum and Deborah Pugh from Sheppey. All the works will be for sale.

Griselda Mussett from the Trust said ‘It’s great seeing the Purifier Building being used by the community like this and we hope lots of people will call in to see the show.’

 

Local Artists showing in the Purifier

Faversham Creek Trust is really delighted to host a show by ‘Diversi’, a group of local artists, as part of the East Kent Artists Open Studios 2014.

The Trust’s Purifier Building at Morrisons on the creekside will be open each Saturday and Sunday from 11 to 5pm for all three weekends starting 18/19 October through till 1/2 November.

The artists are Susanna Rosti Rossini, Siobhan Timoney and Kim Barnicott from Faversham, Pat Wilson Smith from Canterbury, and Laurie Harpum and Deborah Pugh from Sheppey. All the works will be for sale.

Griselda Mussett from the Trust said ‘It’s great seeing the Purifier Building being used by the community like this and we hope lots of people will call in to see the show.’

 

How to have your say on the future of Faversham Creek

The Town Council’s Faversham Creek Neighbourhood Plan has reached the Consultation Stage of the Pre-Submission Draft Plan. This is the opportunity for every resident in Faversham to have their say about the future development of many sites along the Creek.

The Town Council has an exhibition this Saturday afternoon, 7 June, from 1.30 pm to 5.30 pm in the Assembly Rooms, Preston Street. They are also holding a drop-in event at The Vaults in Preston Street on Wednesday, 11 June from 7 pm to 10 pm, and a Market Stall on Saturday, 21 June from 10 am to 4 pm. We encourage you to visit one of these events and study the Draft Plan.

You can see the printed draft plan at the Library or by contacting the Town Clerk, and also online at http://favershamcreekneighbourhoodplan.org.uk/consultation/
You will find a link to the Town Council’s questionnaire here too, and we urge you to fill it in with your views before the deadline of 5 pm on Monday 30 June.

We have a different vision for the Creek, which will regenerate our maritime heritage as well as providing many of the other things that the town needs, including footpaths, community facilities and housing. We have joined with the Brents Community Association and BMM Weston to create an exhibition which shows some of these ideas.

Many members of Faversham Creek Trust were among the 506 people who came to our Private and Public Exhibitions last Friday and Saturday in the Alexander Centre, and many contributed to the 281 completed questionnaires which will enable us to analyse your views and wishes. We will publish the results once the consultation period ends.

You can see some of the responses to our exhibition in this video on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuQLe1EaoIc

For those of you who were not able to come last weekend, we have moved our exhibition to the Purifier Building in Morrisons car park, and we are opening it to the public every Saturday morning in June from 10 am to 1 pm. Please come, and bring your friends, family and neighbours!

We will be happy to arrange special visits at other times for groups of people who cannot come on a Saturday morning, for example school groups or local business owners. Please email us ( favershamcreektrust@yahoo.co.uk ) with a phone contact and we will call you to arrange a suitable time and date.

Our exhibition displays some ideas about how the maritime heritage of the Royal Port of Faversham could be revived and enhanced, with space for repairing and restoring traditional vessels, moorings and storage space for boats. We plan to dredge the Basin (and continue dredging the Creek), and have an opening bridge with gates and sluices to control the water flow again. We will restore the wharves alongside BMM Weston for moorings and boat repairs.

Our vision includes workshops, skilled jobs, education and training, community facilities, a ‘living museum’, and the opportunity to make our town a much greater attraction for visitors who will bring money to the town. It also includes almost as many residential units as the Town Council’s plan, but ours will be homes to suit local people, mainly houses rather than apartments, with a large percentage of them being affordable – and they will not be on the flood plain beside the Creek, so they will not prevent the revival of our maritime heritage.

If you care about the future of Faversham, how it will look and feel for your children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, please take the time to visit the exhibitions and make your views known by completing the Town Council’s questionnaire, and also ours.

You can find most of the information displayed in our exhibition on this website:

http://favershamcreekalliance.com/info.pdf

and complete our questionnaire online here:

http://surveymonkey.com/s/J3C2TNB

You can complete our survey from the link on this website, or print it and deliver it or post it to:

The Purifier Building
Morrisons Wharf
Faversham
ME13 7DY

Don’t miss this chance to shape the future of our Creek and our town for generations yet to come.

The Spring Newsletter

 

 

 

OR Download here;  NEWSLETTER April 2014 FINAL

The Present and the Future for Creek and Town

This film is a taster for a new film being produced by Mike Maloney.

This is what it is all about for this Trust, for the future of the Creek and the Town.

Mike’s other work, such as the famous ‘A Sideways Launch’, can be seen at;

http://www.cwideprods.co.uk/productions/

I make no apologies for also reproducing an updated, related, editorial here,  from last June after Alan Staley, Boatbuilder at Chambers Wharf, won the Craft Skills Award for ‘Encouraging Craft Skills in the Workplace, from the same organisation [Heritage Crafts Assoc.] that awarded Sixer his  for volunteering.

Go to: http://ccskills.org.uk/news/story/craft-skills-awards-winners-announced, and watch the video, Alan and his staff star at 3minutes along.

It is interesting to summarise the recent past, the current, and the developing crafts and skills presence on the Creek;

Ironwharf supports several self-employed boatbuilders, and a Chandlery, and accommodates large craft, including Thames Barges, alongside the Quay and in their floating dock for repair. It is a rare reasonably priced onshore store for dozens of craft, where owners can repair and maintain them.

Chambers Wharf is Alan Staley, Boatbuilder, with a slip and moorings for small to medium sized craft, and a history of successful projects; famously quoted above, on UNDINA for Griff Rhys Jones.

Standard Quay, over a period of 18 years, up to 2011, supported up to 10 craftsmen, and many others, several of whom were highly respected Shipwrights, and included a nascent apprentice scheme, a Block Maker, a complete £m1.4 restoration of a historic craft, but more importantly, developed by a knowledgeable, co-operative and supportive management style and with resources that attracted large traditional craft to the Quay, for berthing, maintenance and restoration.

Swan Quay has been the home of the Sail Maker, Wilkinson Sails, for several years, where they have trained young sailmakers,.

Faversham Creek Trust is developing a maritime trades centre at the Purifier, with a specific mandate to develop the training of Apprentice Shipwrights; it is also home for two craftsmen; one displaced by a developer from Standard quay.

Another important near-creek success story is Creek Creative, maybe not maritime, but certainly craft and small business oriented and supportive.

And yet, some still argue that because there is a lack of maritime businesses rushing to take up the available spaces on the Creek now, the only viable way forward is for these spaces to be given over to speculators and developers of upmarket exclusive housing, or to convert the simple quayside workshops and storage sheds in to bijou restaurants, or worse, museums of the maritime glory already forced away.

These are the same people who flatly refuse to investigate any alternative economic case, and have failed to consider intelligently, a major  positive economic report freely presented to them, because it told them something that they did not want to hear.

They are wrong, of course; if we ignore the history of success above, by failing to build on it and create the waterside space needed for its future, then we must all carry the blame in the years to come. What is needed now for the success of that future, is the time to develop small businesses, supported by an infrastructure of affordable space and a network of complementary crafts and businesses.

That is sustainability. That is what the Presumption in Favour of Sustainable Development quoted in the National Planning Policy Framework is all about. It is certainly not about banging up a few more houses on every available tired industrial site, extracting some small penalty, or is it a bribe, ostensibly for the benefit of the community, which will disappear into some distant pot.

Amongst the site owners, are long standing businesses that have prospered in Faversham, but who, due to changes in the commercial opportunities, have been left with sites that need regeneration; they are not developers themselves, and generally have been in no hurry to sell off to speculators.

It is to these owners that we should turn, in humility, ask them to remember when and how they started, and ask for their support for the future of the Creek as a thriving busy waterway, with relevant businesses, and community areas. That is the compromise that we seek. They should be reminded that the case for developing maritime businesses on the creek has been researched and proven.

Morrisons took the risk when they agreed to give the Purifier to this Trust, a six month old and unknown group then, but with an interesting proposition about the maritime future of the Creek and training of shipwright apprentices. It took two years for the Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group to accept the Trust as a representative body with a significant membership.

As Arthur Percival reminds us, Henry Hatch gave his fortune to the benefit of the Town, and the Creek – not a Street. Surely Henry would approve of the development of the Creek and Creekside for the sustainable benefit of maritime trade and employment.

R Telford, Editor.

Good Reason to go to the Council Meeting Monday 7th

At its meeting on 25 March, the steering group voted to approve a first draft of the Neighbourhood Plan which, for a small number of sites (Ordnance Wharf, the Oil Depot and the Coach Depot) included alternative options – either predominantly housing, as proposed by the respective landowners/developers and supported by the steering group majority, or industrial/training/community use as proposed in the Business Case and by the Faversham Creek Trust and the Brents Community Association, in line with feedback from previous consultations. Discussion of alternative options for Swan Quay was deferred until the following meeting on 1 April.

At the April 1 meeting, diverging from the published agenda, steering group member Andrew Osborne proposed, seconded by Councillor Mike Cosgrove, that all decisions to include alternative options for site uses should be overturned. Votes were taken site-by-site and all alternatives were deleted except for Ordnance Wharf.

Mr Osborne said it would be open to anyone to put forward alternative proposals during the consultation process.

The revised draft of the Neighbourhood Plan will be put before Faversham Town Council for approval at its next meeting on Monday 7 April. There will be an opportunity for questions from the public before the meeting.

TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS OPPORTUNITY TO ASK WHY THEY WENT THROUGH THE 25 MARCH CHARADE AND WHAT POSSIBILITY IS THERE OF ALTERNATIVES TO THE DRAFT PLAN BEING ACCEPTED AT THE NEXT CONSULTATION, GIVEN THE VOTING RECORD OF THE STEERING GROUP.