"Recliner" wrote in message
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"tim....." wrote:
"Recliner" wrote in message
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Basil Jet wrote:
;-(

I guess it's worth much more as land for building.

Only if someone else pays for all the infrastructure improvements to get
people to where there are jobs.

Thanet is a sea of low priced housing and next to zero jobs (and high
deprivation). You aren't going to find many buyers for "estate" houses
at much above "build" costs unless they can find work in the area or have
good access to London.

neither of which are the case here.

People who think that they can build 10,000 houses in this location and
sell them for 150-200K each to unwaged/unemployed/retired, are living in
cloud cuckoo land.

Ann Gloag (of Stagecoach fame) must think she can make a profit on the
deal:

It only cost her a pound, so that wouldn't be difficult.

What I don't understand is if this land is so valuable an amenity that the
council didn't buy it when one pound was enough, just like the Scottish
Government bought Prestwick (they we both for sale at the same time from the
same seller).

"Ann Gloag's decision to close an airport that she bought for £1 last year
and then seek to build up to 1,000 homes on the site has created an unholy
brouhaha that has sucked in everyone from the prime minister down.

The 1000 houses is on a piece of land adjacent to the airport that, they
say, is no longer necessary for operational uses.

The brouhaha is likely to be over the claim that it is "sustainable", when
by any sensible meaning of the term (in the planning sense) it patently is
not:

It is disconnected from the current urban sprawl.
It is served by a bus service of only 10 buses a day.
It is only approachable down narrow roads that are almost certainly
unsuitable for the extra traffic likely to be generated.
It is too far from the railway station for that to be directly useful for
commuting access.

The plans provide for the building of a junior school on site , but for
every other aspect of life: secondary education, work, shopping, medical
services etc residents will have to travel into one of the local centres.
As they are too far away to walk, and the bus service inadequate for most
purposes that means getting into a car and driving along these unsuitable
roads.

Any sensible planning authority would say to the developer - "don't be
silly"!

The joint founder of the Stagecoach bus company, who is said to be worth
£500m, bought Manston airport in Kent last autumn for the nominal amount
and pledged to deliver "real potential for growth". She promised the local
Tory MP, Sir Roger Gale, that she would commit to the airport for two
years."

a promise that she broke (not that it was ever worth anything)

tim