Tag Archives: Green Party

Swale Borough Councillors’ Report April 2022

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Update on the Local Plan

The Local Plan Panel meeting on the 24th March received two reports on progress of the local plan. The council made the decision not to proceed with the version of the local plan published in early 2021 under regulation 19. Instead, a further “Issues and Preferred Options” consultation was undertaken under regulation 18 in November last year. This allowed further consultation on changes that may be necessary due to revisions to the National Planning Policy Framework and representations made during the previous consultation.

The first report is on the main issues raised during the regulation 18 consultation. A number of representations from residents supported not providing the number of new homes required under the method imposed by Government to calculate the local housing need. The constraints of the natural environment, flood risk, and infrastructure limitations were cited as evidence to support this view. Unsurprisingly, developers argued that such constraints are not unique to Swale and that this approach would slow economic growth, make affordability worse and hinder delivery of infrastructure improvements. If the Council were to argue that the full local housing need cannot be met, the local plan inspector would be forensic in their examination of the evidence put forward to justify this position.

There was no clear agreement on the preferred distribution of development across the borough. Issues raised included the capacity of highways, wastewater treatment, health, and education, and the effect on air quality, landscape character and the loss of agricultural land. Kent County Council, the highways authority, highlighted significant detrimental impact on traffic, air quality, and the ability to achieve an increased use of walking, cycling and public transport for local journeys.

The second report sets out the next steps in the local plan review. The inspector’s report on the (current) adopted local plan identified capacity deficiencies in the local and strategic road network that would need to be mitigated. As a result, the council undertook high-level traffic modelling in collaboration with Kent County Council and National Highways prior to the regulation 19 and 18 consultations. At the time it was concluded that there were no “show-stoppers”. The results of more recent finer grained modelling produced surprising results, which showed significant impacts at some key junctions. There are no obvious development strategies that could deliver the local housing need number without adversely affecting these transport corridors. This challenge will require further traffic modelling as the council must leave no stone unturned in its attempt to deliver the local housing need.

It is anticipated that a further Regulation 19 consultation can take place in the early autumn. This will be confirmed in the late spring.

Tim Valentine

TimValentine@swale.gov.uk

Alastair Gould

AlastairGould@swale.gov.uk

Swale Borough Councillors for Boughton & Courtenay

KCC Councillor’s Report February 2022

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Rich Lehmann Swale East

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.

Rich Lehmann

rich.lehmann@kent.gov.uk

Kent County Councillor for Swale East