New plans at long last
And they’re not good
Aside from the questionable decision to build nine four-bedroom family houses on a small site in the centre of town, the demolition of the original building and proposal for a tiny 49-seat cinema is an insult. Have your say here.
Statement from ROTR on the revised Regent development and consultations (12 June 2023):
These plans appeared from out of the blue – so much so that our contact at Dover District Council has revealed they had no advance notice that they were going to be published either. What is particularly bizarre is that Mr Wallace and Mr Digweed do not even own much the land on which they propose building nine large townhouses. We have learned that the land to the rear of the Regent site, comprising the car park, old bus station waiting rooms, and public toilets, are still owned by DDC. We know there were discussions about Mr Wallace and Mr Digweed possibly buying the car park some years ago, but nothing was agreed. How curious to launch extensive consultations about plans for land which has yet to be secured. One wonders what price DDC will ask – if they are of a mind now to sell at all – for public amenity land proposed as luxury (no doubt buy-to-let) residences…
We also note that the entire site on which the Regent now stands – over half of which would, in the new plans, be given over to the townhouse development – is covered by the Restrictive Covenant which states that it must be used as a cinema. Reopen the Regent would fight any attempt to amend or revoke this Covenant.
Reopen the Regent suspects that this another in Messrs Wallace and Digweed’s long list of delaying tactics and broken promises. A 49-seat plan patently won’t be economically viable (our cinema experts advise that it might possibly work ‘as a labour of love’ run by volunteers – we don’t think this is what the developers have in mind). But even then it wouldn’t meet the needs of the town – in fact, if everyone in the new houses and flats wanted to go to the cinema on the same day, there wouldn’t be room for anyone else.
We encourage all Deal citizens to express their opinions at (or in advance of) the two online consultation sessions on the 21st and 22nd of June (register here: regentdeal.communityuk.site). Questions we’d like answered include can we see the research done, and the fully costed business plan produced, for the 49-seat cinema? Has there been a survey to determine that none of the original award-winning iron-work can be salvaged? What are the ecological and pollution implications of a demolition?
Reopen the Regent looks forward to hearing the voices of the people of Deal, of the newly reconvened Dover District Council, and of other interest parties – perhaps even the developers – at the consultations.