An inspector calls

We finally had all the parts of the jigsaw available to us, all we had to do was put them in the right places.

We thought we had finally broken everything down into their composite parts, put them back together and all we had to do was finish things off around the edges.

We had decided to push to open for the summer holiday season in 1980, but the council had other ideas.

The council stopped being difficult and started being down right obstructive. The first move they made to delay us was to insist on our signing a Section 52 Agreement which would likely impose impossible conditions.

The saga of the planning permission at the site rolled into early 1980. Bearing in mind if the insurers had got their way, we wouldn’t have got this far.

We continued to treat the council with respect and I insisted that everything we did was by the book thinking that if we treated the council fairly then they would bestow the same on us.

The first hurdle this time was to get the bar licences in place in order for us to apply to the brewery for the money they had promised us.

We applied to the local magistrates for bar licences but the council objected to the application. The magistrates, however, were unbiased in the way they dealt with the application and rejected the councils objections.

We now at the very least had the ability to open a bar!

Not only that we had the appropriate licences to open The Dolphin Bar and Restaurant and a wine bar licence for The Pirate Bar, right in the bow of the ship.

Before granting the licences, the magistrates had been to the ship to inspect her. They paid particular attention to the fire escapes and safety arrangements, which after careful inspection they felt were more than adequate. Given that the magistrates had given us the appropriate licences to trade as a bar, we were sure that it wouldn’t be long now before the council finally gave us the full planning permission.

Obviously someone forget to tell the council the plot because they, and the fire officer had other ideas.

The fire officer had asked for another three fire escapes to be installed, two were straight forward but the third had to be attached to the car doors at the rear of the ship, which were obviously a considerably distance from the dock.

At the time of us moving the ship to the docks, there was an engineering company directly opposite the ship. We contacted them and they urgently erected a platform behind the car deck doors and placed hand rails around two sides for safety.

All we had to do now was bridge the gaps between the new platform and The Laundola which was by now docked towards the stern and from The Laundola to the dock.

I had known for some time about some aluminum gang planks at a scrap merchants in Buckley called Spencers but I had already discounted them as being unsuitable for use on the ship. I returned to the yard and measured them and I couldn’t believe that they were a perfect fit.

The engineers worked on finishing the hand rails and we waited for the walk ways to arrive.

They finally arrived on the morning we were due to open.

For whatever reason, the Chief Fire Officer couldn’t attend that day to ensure that we had complied with the Magistrates Order so he sent two guys in his place. They could not have been more different in attitude.

They were immediately impressed by the sight of an army of market trader’s handball a one ton gangplank across onto The Laundola and into place, they rolled up their sleeves and helped. This one gesture felt we might finally begin to win the support of the local inspectors.

Within minutes, the walkway from the shore, across to The Laundola and then onto the platform by the car deck doors was completed.

Yet again we had got our monies worth out of The Laundola and yet again she saved the day.