This week the Heritage Lottery Fund released a series of previously withheld documents from a Freedom of Information Request I'd issued back on May 13th 2015. The request is in the public domain on the excellent What Do They Know website. The documents released reveal a worrying level of what I think can be honestly described as anger and concern from the main funder of the £28m publicly funded project in the weeks running up to the park opening on June 19th. In particular this letter.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing said someone somewhere. What we now know is that Sands Heritage Limited the chosen operator of Dreamland hit the financial skids six months in and sought legal action laying the blame at the door of Thanet District Council. Scroll down for the debt document of creditors on Ed Targett's blog here. The result of this action has local businesses having to agree to wait up to 5 years for payment for debts of £2.9m. I understand the detail of how these debts were accrued are subject to gagging orders.
Dreamland is a crucial project for Margate and £30m is a lot of public money. By comparison, Turner Contemporary came in at £18m. Thousands of hours of volunteer work went in from the public over a 12 year period to fight against the closure of the site as a working park and secured the said millions in funding. It's for this reason that the issue of who operates the park is of public interest and that the best people come out as being chosen.
I was interviewed today by BBC South East about the FOI and it will run tonight.
My hope, as I'm sure most of Margate share, is that everyone with the responsibility to steer the good ship Dreamland and its associated funding does just that. If you haven't read it already, Ed Targett's post earlier in the week is very good.
With all things that are public projects, openness and transparency is key.
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