Meeting commenced: 7.30pm
Present Parkdean Resorts: Ashley Crawshaw, Stephen Griffiths, Orinta Pavilonyte, Claire Ward and Holly Robertson.
Local attendance: Mary Stonehouse, Anne Bright, Christina Gorinshy, Maggie Beaumount, Nicki Palmer, Matthew Whitley, Merry and Iain Springate and Simon Maddock, Jane Young.
AC- Welcome everyone, can you all hear me, ok? Big welcome to you all and thank you all for coming. We have a few slides to go through with you. We will go through some points with you, what we have done and what we plan for 2023 for the community then time for any questions you may have. My name is Ashley I am the regional director and have been for 3 years now, I am from the restaurant industry and absolutely love hospitality. This is Steve Griffiths who many of you already know and he is our Development & Estates consultant and have been with PDR for 22 years, then we have Orinta our General Manager who has been with us for a year and 2 months now, Claire our Assistant General Manager and Holly who is our beach ranger and it is her 5th season with us.
AC- (Goes through “On Park Slide”) Big investment in 2022- we had Thunderbird Fried Chicken which is a London based company and we have invested in new fleet. We are a major employer for the area, the average team start young with us, and we want to progress and train/develop with them and hope they come back year on year. There are lots of jobs and a real mix of roles that we offer.
AC- (What’s been happening slide) The water fountain has been a huge success. With the working partnership with RNLI is a huge investment for us and the RNLI deliver an amazing service throughout the year to ensure safety for all our guests and of course you. I will pass you over to Holly to talk about some of the other things we have bene involved in.
HR- We were awarded the blue flag; our water quality went up to excellent last year and we had to meet a further 40 points which we are continuously working on but it is a great achievement. We do lots of workshops on the beach with local schools- educational workshops. The sand dune restoration happened this year and is an ongoing project, you would have seen the fencing that has gone up and the planting of the grasses to help with the dunes. We are working with Natural England; this is to help build up the front of the dunes.
Question- We used to have a beach clean/machine like a rake, do we still use this?
HR- We do still have this, but it is classed as old fashion way of cleaning the beach, it tears up the beach and does break down ecosystems which causes more harm, we can do it if there was to be a big wash up of seaweed/rubbish but we like to ensure we leave as much natural material on the beach as possible.
Question- It has been said that the sand dunes are being treated differently and as locals we can see them disappearing.
HR- The theory is the dunes should be free to move, sometimes the grass can keep it too stable, our dunes are much smaller here at Croyde than Braunton Burrows- the sand gets blown over the top of dunes here and doesn’t collect it. It is a very delicate balance for us we have fenced off the area where the dunes are very slow to allow them to regrow/build. We will be looking for Christmas trees this year to help build the dunes.
Question- Are they officially walking dunes? Is there a problem with them being walked on?
HR- It’s how we manage them and work out the delicate way to do the right thing, but we are working closely with National England. Hopefully we are doing the right thing, it can all change very quickly as you know with the dunes just behind the lifeguard hut, we noticed that just after covid it was starting to recede, and we contacted Natural England straight away. Sometimes it can take a while to get information back from National England. We monitor all the dunes, but it is a delicate process.
(Community Funding Slide)
AC- We have donated £78,150 to local projects which is amazing, and we hope to continue to support the local community. Really good to see what has been spent, we have £30k left for funding for 2023 and if you have any ideas for funding, please email Orinta and we will put it to the team. We would like to open the floor to questions now if anyone has any?
Question: Are we able to bring dogs on the beach before 8am and after 8pm?
HR-Now we are a blue flag we need to protect the water quality, dog faeces hold at lot of bacteria and pollutes the water so it would not be a good idea.
Question: How do you manage that with the footpath? And do you have signage? For people with dogs.
HR- There is not much we can do with regards to the footpath, we manage the best we can, the dogs should be on the leads when along the path. We try to keep everyone tucked up to the dunes. There are signs around the beach areas explaining the rules. We can not apply for blue flag etc… if we allow dogs. I think we need to educate people more on why dogs are not allowed on the beach. We have signs on the dunes, we spray on the dunes which the national trust does as well which shows how much mess is left. Things like BBQs as well, we need to look at educating. We do put signs on the dunes, but it is a constant battle as we are constantly replacing signage.
Question: BBQs on the beach- What security is in place to manage it? And how many do you have?
P-We do have security that work 24hour a day and if it is reported we will go and deal with it. We are happy to give you the number for security so if you see anything then we ask that you call. We have 5-6 guards which, with our licensing, we must have 2 within the complex. Of course, with it being such a large area with some many areas, entrances etc to the beach if we can ask for your support and report it so we can then deal with it.
HR- We were trained up last year to be able to issue fixed noticed penalties, this does only cover dogs etc but when it comes up again, we can look at adding BBQs to this.
Question: Surfer’s Paradise, last year it was changed, it was miles better, is it going to be like last year?
OP- Yes we are, it will be the same as last year for 28 days and we will ensure spacing is right and monitored.
Question: Do you have a relationship with Southwest Water? What support do you get?
H.R-For me, it’s the biggest impact we can have is education, all the groups we work with, its something we always talk about they can help apply the pressure on the government/them. We attend the forum of course we have the blue flag this year, we are talking about it, we supported the protest a few weeks ago which was held on our beach.
Question: Are you aware of the camper vans, the blue liquid they use it affects the break down in the sewage plant itself. It clears all the bacteria. There are alternatives.
HR- That’s interesting- we were not aware and will look into that, its about educating our guests. Yes, will need to find out more about that.
AG- But we have less of an issue on the summer when we have more camping.
OP- We would need to educate our guests before they come onto the park, we could look at informing them of what they can and can not use.
AC- Any further questions?
Question: Are you looking to sell? Is there going to be a take over?
AC- As a holiday company we will always see a change of investors. Our owners are a private equity company called Onex. Of course, we sold the apartments, and they are now up for a lot of money and we believe planning is now in place for more to be built over what would have been the pool area.
Comment from local: Ruda has always been an important part of the community so growing up we always used to go in there growing it. It’s always been such an important part, everyone wants to come to Croyde and we want them to come here for here. With it now and we are talking this it is really good to have this communication with you now.
OP- We are here, you are always welcome to pop down and see us and you have our emails so please contact us whenever you need to.
Comment from local: You are always welcome to attend on the 1st Wednesday of the month for our community meeting for tea and cake. We would welcome you all.
OP- Thank you and we will definitely be there.
AC- We are looking to updating you again on 19th October to see how the year is going. Thank you for all coming and please help yourself to further drinks and a chat.
Meeting ended: 8.30pm
Comments