After the sleepy days of summer, the October Harbour Board meeting always has a back-to-school, back to hard work, quality about it. The budget and fees for the next year are set – to allow for South Hams District Council’s lengthy procedures – and there was also the issue of improving enforcement of the rule that only SHDC Council Tax payers can retain a harbour mooring (you don’t, of course, have to be a local resident to have a commercial mooring). Added to that, there was a discussion on speeding, against the background of some grumpy letters in the Kingsbridge Gazette; and the tricky issue of those gateways to Salcombe, Whitestrand and Normandy pontoons.
Regular readers (assuming there are some) should be up-to-speed on much of this. Each year the harbour dues and charges tend to be tweaked to remove anomalies and a small (2%) across-the-board increase applied: that was the easy part. The Board has had to spell out yet again the requirement to be a Council Tax payer to renew your harbour mooring for another year. This has been the formal position since at least 1985, yet some people have slipped through the net. There may now be appeals to resolve the hard cases and the Board has set up a mechanism to hear these. The Board’s aim is to generate a steady, if small, trickle of moorings to allocate to local people on the waiting lists.
The speeding controversy persists. Although the speed limit may never have been enforced effectively south of Lanbury Point until recently, the byelaws have always said that the speed limit extends another half mile or so further south and this both protects small craft in the harbour mouth and safeguards the leading line into the harbour. It would be impossible, therefore, to persuade the Department of Transport to change the speed limit area, even if the Harbour Board wished to do so. So expect no change there.
The more positive, and potentially exciting, issue is the future of Whitestrand and Normandy pontoons. The latest proposal – as the result of consultations over the summer – is largely to extend them both; to move Whitestrand out a bit and increase its capacity for commercial traffic; and to widen Normandy, make it the main town landing, and give it fingers.
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.