It Pays To Advertise
One of the more bizarre back stories to our campaign, is the unwillingness of the owners of Hamptons, to publish any public information about what weekly events take place at Hamptons.
Showcasing Your Activities
If you own a business that needs to attract local customers to pay the bills, you’d make an effort to show what’s on offer and showcase your business. Just take a look at the Hamptons Facebook page, or their awful website, it doesn’t make a good first impression.
In fact if it wasn’t for the fantastic Tennis section and the NHS Blood Transfusion, we think Hamptons would be in administration by now.
The last real timetable we can find for Hamptons, from 2021
why are hamptons being so cagey ?
So this all about the principal use of the venue as a Place of Worship. When the council investigated the escalation of the use for public worship and religious education in 2022, they asked the owners (Chelmsford Muslim Society) to supply a timetable for religious and non religious use.
It actually a took a legal compliance notice (called a planning contravention notice) to get CMS to respond. and their response was vague and not really a timetable at all). Here’s what they said:
Extract from the response to 2022 Planning Contravention Notice. Could this be any more vague ?
CMS response to questions about the Makarim Academy in 2022, showing 61.5 hours of F1(f) use.
Without any formal timetable published publicly, CMS know that they can be economical with the truth, and the council can’t prove otherwise ?
And let’s Not forget the race card
In December 2022, Hampton’s new legal representative fired off this quite hostile response to Planning Enforcement:
Public worship/religious instruction attracts it's own use sub class F1(f) , and differs from general educational use, class F1(a). The Makarim Academy is a madrassa, offering religious instruction.
You'd think a law firm that does planning would know that !
the goodwill and reputation of hamptons is destroyed
And this falls firmly at the feet of the Directors of Hamptons, and the owners, the Chelmsford Muslim Society,
If you lie to your customers and local residents about the plans to expand the use as a Place Of Worship, they won’t be back.
If you lie to the council about the level of use for public worship and religious instruction, you will be found out.
If you continue to cause problems for local residents with anti-social parking, night time noise and disturbance and blasting out the call to prayer, word spreads quickly, and customers avoid your venue. And that goodwill and reputation will take years to rebuild !