I have to say that the ‘Seahive’ sounds like delivery bloat to get the hotel and spa plans through. The more expensive and less profitable ‘community slanted’ seahive will quietly die once the foundations for the hotel are safely in place.
I lived very near there for 14 years. It is a depressed area that used to be Kent's coalmining region. There is no way it is the sort of area for a 'luxury hotel'
Unless you happen to own a nearby golf course...
The whole thing, like everything else in the BRITISH economy, is a property scam. But the planning process is being sufficiently slow that there's no danger of spades in the ground by August, so as far as we're concerned it just means they're surprisingly keen to accommodate us to fulfil their 'grassroots sport' tickybox.
Betteshanger...
I lived in Aylesham, whose railway station remains an entertaining place, offering regular glimpses of people returning to London and further afield, shortly after discovering that Aylesham is not Aylsham. Yes, really.
Aylesham is the largest of the pit villages around Snowdown colliery. Betteshanger is a smaller village by far, and the Park in question is simply the site of the old 'pit heap' of colliery waste. The villages are in Dover District, but are neglected by the Council. When the 'White Cliffs Experience' (
) opened, it was the only cinema in Dover. Dover district residents got free entry to the 'attraction, all except those from Aylesham.
Aylesham sits at the boundary of Dover and Canterbury districts. Those in Canterbury postcodes were granted free entry to the Cathedral, except for---you guessed it.
When snow hits the area, which is a relatively frequent event, the road past Aylesham to Wingham is cleared. The little village of Adisham nearby is cleared.
Yup; you have guessed it again.
There was a public sonsultation I attended about the development of the village, in which the presenter referred to Fatfield, a declining village on the edge of Washington, Tyne and Wear, as an example of how a place could lose its life. She was most unhappy when I spoke up and explained that I had lived very close to Fatfield, that it had been killed by planners as a deliberate act to create a riverside park, and that I had spoken up against the road closures that destroyed the place and were later ruled to be a mistake but 'too expensive to fix now'
I spoke up about the planned massive expansion of the village as a dorm for Canterbury, as there was only a plan to build more houses and no additional community amenities. The council then closed Aylesham's school, throwing all the equipment and furniture into skips, so that they could build more industrial units on the land.
Oops. The land had originally been bequeathed to the council with a caveat that the land could only ever be used for educational purposes. The extra housing has now been built, but nothing in the way of extra infrastructure. If you look at the NW side on Google maos, you will see the primary school in a swathe of open land. That's why it is so unbuilt.
So, in short, ANYTHING
