A group called ‘The Friends of Cliftonville Coastline’ have begun a crowdfunding scheme to raise money to save a local playground.
The Margate based group are asking for help to save the Viking Ship Playground. They are raising money to fund Richard Buxton Solicitors, who will investigate whether Thanet District Council have followed the correct procedures in making the decision to demolish and not renovate the playground.
The group need to raise £2,500 by 8th March 2022. After only one day, they have already been pledged £680 towards their target.
The group say that The Viking Ship Playground is a beautiful bespoke natural play area featuring a large and iconic wooden ship that is much loved by local families and visitors. It was built with £88K from £300K in grant funding to improve the lives of local children in 2009.
The friends say they have an itemised quote from the original installer to renovate the playground for £27K. The Children’s Playground Company have based this on the latest H&S report by RoSPA. TDC would prefer to demolish and rebuild at a cost of £169K.
With the funds raised the solicitors will be able to properly investigate Thanet District Council’s decision and find out whether the correct procedures have been followed in deciding to demolish the Viking Ship playground – a decision the group say, appears to have been made without due consideration of planning permissions, laws to protect wildlife, constitutional aims to engage the local community, Local Plan commitments, grant funding requirements and their Climate Emergency declaration.
Thanks to all the people that are putting time into this. there needs to be more transparency here from TDC
The Friends of Cliftonville Coastline was set up in 2018 to protect and improve the ‘beautiful and unique heritage coast’ for the local residents and visitors of today. They say they came together with a mutual desire to renovate the Newgate Gap Sea Shelter for the community, but sadly Thanet District Council part dismantled it (without planning permission) when cleaning up the coast for the Turner Prize, then gave it to another group. It continues to deteriorate.
Thanet Council are yet to respond.
Further information and a option to pledge money can be found here.
