New ground gets the green light!
At last night’s Regeneration and Property Committee meeting, Canterbury City Council officially agreed to grant a lease to Tankerton F.C. on 15 acres of land on the B road between Whitstable and Herne Bay (the Whitstable Bends) next to St Augustine’s Business Park. It was clear that the tremendous support the Club had received at the Local Area Council meetings had helped in achieving this. We thank everyone who came along to those meetings.
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Since planning permission had already been granted in 2016, we can now officially call the land our new home and realise the grant that had been held for us by Sport England. Ecological work is well under way and it is hoped to have the first pitch installed next spring. Further pitches and a club house will follow over the next couple of years, as well as a nature reserve being created to the east of the site with walkways and a pond for the enjoyment of local people.
We have worked very hard behind the scenes through all sorts of bureaucracy to get this far and, whilst there is a whole lot more to do to deliver the facility, we hope it will now be a lot more fun with various fundraising events taking place. Everyone will begin to see more visible progress being made and things happening on-site all across the 15 acres over the coming months.
We will still need to use Seaview for the foreseeable future; Park Holidays and their staff have been extremely good to us over the past years and we very much hope this relationship continues. It’s a fantastic resource and has held up well, given the usage it has had. We were fortunate with a dry winter last year so had good playing time up there but have not been so lucky in past years. The club has grown tremendously in recent years and we are asking a lot of the Seaview staff and residents with all the extra work and traffic we create on site. Hopefully once we start to use the new ground there will be less traffic and congestion at Seaview for all and the pitches will hold up even better than they do now. We look forward to continuing and improving our relationship with the Holiday Park.
Tankerton FC would like to thank Canterbury City Council and all our local councillors for their help, guidance and support in getting us to this stage. It has been valued and much appreciated.
Chair of Trustees
Tim Elgar