MPs must stop developers’ feeding frenzy By Trudy Dean, Chairman, West Malling Parish Council


BOROUGH councils are obliged to have a five-year landbank of potential sites available for developers looking to build in their area.


If they fail to meet this target, government inspectors are advised to grant any planning application which comes before them at appeal, unless there are very strong reasons why they should not do so.


This advice can override most existing planning protections, including Green Belt.


The lack of five years’ land supply was given by the inspector as one of two main reasons for granting planning consent to the extra care development within the Green Belt on London Road, West Malling, in January 2019.


The Inspector also pointed out that the borough council is some way from getting approval for its new plan, which includes all the agreed housing sites for development until 2031. Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council has fallen below this target, and a year later it still has no agreed date for the approval of its new Draft Local Plan.


This limbo makes the borough very vulnerable to developers piling in with speculative applications in the hope they will get permission despite their chosen sites not being identified in the Draft Local Plan for development.


It makes a nonsense of the claim that the planning system is determined by local people.


In our area, four sites are on land that local people have overwhelmingly said should become an extension to the Green Belt, and this policy is included in the unapproved Draft Local Plan. Locally, we have already lost the London Road site and the one between Kings Hill and the bypass, and now we have two further applications from Wates and Gladman to fight off. The recent success against Bellway cost the community £80,000 in legal representation. But then we had the rare benefit of the Ancient Scheduled Monument of Malling Abbey to bolster our case.


The planning system is based on local plans drawn up with full public consultation written into the rules and so the position across a whole district can be looked at in a co-ordinated way. The merits of one site against another can be judged and the infrastructure needed, such as roads and


County Council plans work to traffic signals to ease flow


KENT County Council is planning work to modify the existing traffic signals at the A20 London Road junction with New Hythe Lane, Larkfield to help increase the traffic flow through the junction. The scheme, which will take five months, will mean an upgrade to footpaths, improved crossings facilities along the road with larger pedestrian refuge islands and a new puffin crossing east of the Bradbourne Lane junction. Work starts on February 3, between 8am and 5pm, and there will be temporary traffic lights.


The work is needed to improve traffic flow and queuing capacity. For more click onto www.kent.gov.uk/highways.


DEVELOPER Gladman intends to submit an application for up to 75 houses on land alongside Station Approach. The site would extend from Eden Farm Lane, opposite


West Malling Station, all the way to the bypass. Access is shown onto the slip road between the bypass and Swan Street.


This is a different site to the location of the Bellway application which was recently dismissed on appeal. Once again it is part of the proposed extension to the Green Belt contained in the Draft Local Plan.


schools, decided. However, when inspectors consider appeals, their rulings are based only on the application before them and there is no co-ordination at all. It can be


described as a “fill up the next field” system of planning. And the views put forward in the review of the Local Plan by the public are not considered. We need our MPs to get involved in this issue and get changes to the planning system to


prevent this developers’ feeding frenzy. West Malling Parish Council has invited Tonbridge


and Malling MP Tom Tugendhat to discuss this issue, which is exhausting the time and money of borough and parish councils to take on developer after developer. This barmy system simply cannot go on.


New 75 house application near West Malling station


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