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Council Leader Everitt’s Ferry Failure. As Losses Top £40million He Can’t Even Give Port Away



Thanet Council’s Labour Leader with special responsibility for ports and harbours, Rick Everitt,  has since the collapse of TransEuropa ferries in 2013 doggedly pursued his  fantasy of reinstating a  cross channel Ro-Ro ferry services at Ramsgate Port  but  always without success.

 

His latest  failure is all the more humiliating because,  out of sheer face saving  desperation,  Everitt planned  to give away a large 17 acre chunk of Ramsgate  port  via a 25 year lease which is likely to require no rent payments.

Ferry Fixated Everitt
Ferry Fixated Everrit

If that wasn’t enough ferry fantasist Everitt sugar coated his giveaway with a non-repayable £4.5million grant (some would say bribe) to help the new ferry concessinaire cover some of the costs required to improve the port’s dilapidated ferry facilities.

 

Documents reveal this generous wodge of taxpayers cash was stolen from funds originally destined for the Ramsgate fishing fleet to  improve their port side facilities. Plans which the fleet, for the want of the promised cash, have now been forced  to abandon.

 

Everitt publicly boasted that his gold  plated giveaway would ensure “a ferry service will return to Ramsgate in the next year or so” and that “far from being “pie in the sky” his plan was a “key component in Ramsgate’s regeneration” which would bring back a ferry service which “can once again generate critical funding to provide improved local services, as it did in the past”.

 

Sadly for Everitt his plans proved to be nothing but a wet dream. Sources tell me that despite his generous offer of the £4.5million publicly funded bung and the  25 year  rent free lease, not a single ferry service operator came forward to avail themselves of this exciting business opportunity.

 

This was  hardly surprising. With the exception of economically illiterate Everitt many people, including myself and the industry savvy ferry operators he was trying to woo, knew full well that his  plan, despite its generosity, was always destined to fail due to the fierce competition faced by Ramsgate Port from its nearby rivals.

 

Less than twenty miles away the Port of Dover recently

completed a £200 million expansion and modernisation  programme which has hugely increased its Ro-Ro ferry capacity.

 

Just last year the port received another £45 million from the Government’s Levelling  Up Fund for the purpose of improving and speeding up access to,  and exit from,  the Port and streamlining  the customs and passport processing of the hundreds, if not thousands,  of HGVs and private cars which use it every day. It is said that these improvements will be future proofed to deal with forthcoming biometric border checks and will significantly reduce congestion in and around Dover Port and  reduce the need to use  the infamous Operation Stack.

 

The Medway Ports have also seen, over the past decade,  a huge £100 million plus investment in expanding and improving their facilities. In addition, plans were recently  announced to develop a  new £30million RoRo ferry  berth at Medway Ports.

 

Everitt’s refusal to face the facts and admit that Ramsgate Port has no future as a commercial  operation and his long and continuing denial that a leisure/education  based alternative should be explored and developed instead, has cost the people of Thanet dear.

 

According to the council’s annual accounts, Ramsgate Port

has,  in each of the  fourteen financial years between 2010-2024,  made huge operating  losses which added together amount to a staggering  £29.6 million.


On top of this, a further  £10 million or more has been invested  by the Council in capital works to the port in the forlorn hope of attracting  new customers. In total the council has, over 14  years, racked  up a total of  £40million in loses. Much of which has and will be paid for by the public

 

Putting these losses into perspective they equate to  £274 for every Thanet resident,  or the equivalent of £7,827 loses per day over fourteen years.


Had the council took swift action to stop or reduce these losses, for example by mothballing some, or all of the port, or putting it to other uses then much of wasted cash could have been put to better uses such desperately needed social rented housing, refuse collection, street cleaning and much more.

 

Don’t  forget that  Labour Council Leader Everitt’s  ferry fixated wet dream, has  played no small role in the 14 year wasteful spaffing of  council funds, which raises serious questions about his suitability to remain as Council Leader, or for that matter as a councillor.

 

More about the port soon

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