
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.

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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