In last week’s edition of the Folkestone & Hythe Express David Monk was quoted as saying (in connection with the proposed development on Princes Parade) “we will probably need to pay about £2 million initially , but the homes will pay for the leisure centre and we’ll see a return.”
However, from the limited amount of information we can see in the redacted financial viability calculation, it is clear that the claimed cost figure of £2 million is after the revenue from the sale of the houses has been taken into account and so will not be recouped let alone produce a return.
A vast amount of preparatory work would need to be done before either the leisure centre or the housing can be built. This includes moving the road, decontaminating the site, providing the necessary services, providing a sustainable urban drainage system including attenuation, rearranging the sea defences, creating sub structures and deep piling, installing the ground gas management system and the necessary ground consolidation works.
The council will have to find considerably more than £2 million up front to fund these works but it is not at all clear that Councillor Monk fully understands the cash flow implications of all this.
We have pointed this out to him and are working on the redacted financial viability calculations (“appendix 3”) to try to make some sense of them. But it would be so much better if FHDC would let the public see the full unredacted version