“Peace Talks”

The local press in Faversham have been keen to see the meeting held at Swale House this last Wednesday as being ‘peace talks’ between Standard Quay (Faversham) Ltd, the management company that set up the Quay as a barge mooring and repair yard in 1992 and Quayside Properties, the company which bought the Quay and surrounding land in 2003. The meeting was certainly a very valuable opportunity for us to explain to both Mr White, our landlord, and the meeting’s mediator,  Swale Borough Council’s Director of Regeneration, Pete Raine, how the site works as a whole and how damaging it would be to fragment it.

Pete Raine set the terms of the discussion beforehand as “to see how far traditional boatbuilding can be safeguarded at Standard Quay”. To that end, we produced a set of three options that we believe illustrate the choices that have to be made, and the consequences and opportunities that would follow from each. These options can be seen by following the link below:

Standard Quay Options

We are very firmly of the opinion that option 1 is the only sensible one for the continuation of traditional boat building in Faversham, and for the wider contribution to the Creek and the Town, but since we are losing our lease, the decision is not ours to make.  We have been asked not to disclose details of the discussion.

I was accompanied to the meeting by Simon Foster of the newly formed Faversham Creek Trust. Unlike the Faversham Creek Consortium, this is a body which will have the power to actually do practical things such as owning land and raising funding for projects. While it is not connected to Standard Quay (Faversham) Ltd, it was formed by a group of people concerned about our demise and keen to see something practical being done quickly to retain what remains of the working Creek in Faversham. They are a new organisation, but I think one that has a good chance of success. Please do visit their website at  http://favershamcreektrust.com .