We set up a petition against development via 38 Degrees.
http://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/no-development-on-prince-s-parade
When the petition was first launched in 2013 we collected 555 online signatures and another 500 on paper. Councillor Tillson received the petition from us at the Shepway offices before the cabinet meeting on 23 July 2013. Shepway have refused to accept it officially because not all the signatories had Shepway postcodes and they didn’t have time to separate them. We don’t think this is relevant because Prince’s Parade is as important to visitors to the area as it is to local people.
We relaunched it in 2016 after Shepway announced proposals for 150 houses. As at June 2018 the number of signatures on the online petition is 6567 and continually rising as more people find out what is being proposed.
The online petition is still open if you would like to sign it.
Signing the petition has the additional benefit that we will then be able to contact you by email.
Just before Christmas 2016 we had another go at submitting our petition but perhaps not all that surprisingly Shepway rejected it again because it included non residents.
So we asked 38 Degrees to give us the raw data, we sorted it by postcode and re-presented it split into residents and non residents. But Shepway rejected it again because their constitution says that petitions must include”The name and address and signature of any person supporting the petition.” (Shepway have their own online petition facility so it would be interesting to know how that fits with the requirement for a signature.) 38 Degrees suggested that what the council was really after was the list of email addresses of those signing the petition. For data protection reasons, 38 Degrees are not able to supply us with those but were willing to supply partial email addresses for all those who have signed the petition. But guess what – Shepway refused that too!
In spite of the Shepway District Council’s ongoing unwillingness to accept the petition, they cannot deny its existence and weight. Their reasons for its rejection do not stand up to scrutiny since 38 Degrees have assured us that other councils, including the London Assembly, accept their petitions.
You may have spotted a petition that has been set up on the Shepway website. Please don’t sign this. We are not promoting it as we consider that the 38 Degrees petition is our official one and there is no need for another.