News
Car parks ‘lost to developers’
THE loss of business car parks to development is changing the face of town centre parking – and one worrying side effect is a reduction in donations to local charities. Developers are taking over
empty outdated office buildings and gaining planning permissions for change of use, often to residen- tial flats or apartments. Many of these buildings have car parking attached and much of this is disappearing to meet the heavy demand for residential or other commercial uses. Most significant recent substan-
tial losses have been at: Kent House, Romney Place – now to be converted to flats with the car park off Mote Road contracted out to a commercial car park operator. The Corpus Christie development at the junction of Pudding Lane and Earl Street. Both these large car parks have been used for charity parking in the
weekends leading up to Christmas by the Rotary Club of Maidstone, whose loss could see donations re- duce from £5,000 to £2,000 this sea- son.
Unless other parks belatedly be-
come available, Rotary parking this year will be reduced to: Victoria Court, opposite Haynes in Ashford Road. Whitehead Monckton, solicitors, 74 King Street. Chaucer House, Knightrider Street – available for the first time. Rotary members and friends will
man the three parks from 8.30am to 4pm on five days: December 5, 12, 13, 19 and 20 and parkers will be in- vited to donate to local charities. Rotary co-ordinator and past president Robert Wicken (tele- phone 07976 360322), said: “The town’s car park policy will cer- tainly damage our charitable col- lections – and I fear the cumulative impact will be harmful to town cen- tre Christmas trade.”
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downsmail.co.uk War memorial dedication
THE Bishop of Dover will re-dedicate the warmemorial in Harrietsham at 2pm on Saturday, November 7. A generous grant fromKCC Cllr JennyWhittle initiated the fundraising,
with the rest donated by individuals, community groups, events and Har- rietsham Parish Council. This paid for the renovation of the memorial and the fitting of seven new plaques bearing the 49 names of the men, women and children who died during the two world wars. Guests will include residents
and relatives of those named on the memorial, the Mayor of Maidstone, the Royal British Le- gion and the Scout and Guide movement. Members of The Queen’s Own
Royal West Kent Living History Group will be there with authen- tic World War I uniforms and equipment. The re-dedication ceremony
will be followed by refreshments in St John the Baptist Church. The eventwill also see the launch of the second Harrietsham His- tory Society book, about the men and womenwho lost their lives in WorldWar I. Mike Bishop, one of the organ-
isers of the project, said: “The re- dedication comes at the end of a two-year project to research those originally named on the memorial and track and add the details of those missed when the memorialwas first un- veiled in 1920. At the start of the project the memorial included 23 names, 14 from the FirstWorldWar and nine from the SecondWorldWar. A fur- ther 26 individuals have now been identified, researched and their details added, along with cleaning and someminor repair work.”
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