1 February 2022

After a much needed break over the Christmas and New Year period, things are back in full flow already and my inbox is as busy as ever. One topic that I and my colleagues continue to be asked questions on is our position on housing, and specifically the amount of it that is looking like it might be built on some of our local high grade farmland.

Finding enough locations in Swale to put all of the houses is particularly tricky as so much of the land is 'constrained'. Large amounts of land north of the A2 are susceptible to flooding and much of the area south of the M2 is part of the highly protected Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. This leaves a narrow belt, primarily close to the A2, as the target for most potential housing development.

Our government's housing targets seem to be driven more by economic factors rather than based on genuine local need. Coupled with the changes they have made to national planning policy in the past decade, which have taken a lot of power away from local councils, the story all across Kent is one of huge housing estates being built at a truly dizzying rate. In the past the majority of these large estates have been expansions of towns, but now they are increasingly being in rural areas, sometimes dwarfing the villages they are being built alongside.

The Prime Minister raised people's hopes at the Conservative Party conference last October when he gave a speech stating that new homes should not be built on 'green fields', but sadly three months later there is still no indication that any change to policy is forthcoming. Current planning policy states that if the borough council fail to get a revised local plan agreed before the previous plan expires, then the door is effectively opened for speculative developers to build where they please.

A local environmental campaigner started an excellent and well researched petition to Michael Gove in December which has already gained over 50,000 signatures. If you would like to add your name, please go to https://www.change.org/p/westminster-halt-harmful-housing-with-new-environmental-planning-law-no-more-greenfields-building 

Hopefully there is still time for the government to see sense on this issue and review both planning policy and their housebuilding targets. It would be great if we could be building a few hundred low cost houses based on local need rather than thousands of houses that are unaffordable to the majority of those people who have grown up in Swale and work in the area.

 

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