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And that will be Kent gone SimonSays


“MOST things are never meant,” wrote Philip Larkin in the 1972 work, Going Going, which marked out the old curmudgeon as a rather unlikely environmentalist.


Although not considered his greatest poem, it succinctly catastrophises the lust for building houses, modern demands for more of everything and the loss of England as Larkin knew it.


He despaired at his country becoming


the “first slum of Europe” and this out of the comparatively benign, but necessary, post-war housing boom and high-risers. Heaven knows what he would say if he saw it now.


Here, in 2020, the whole of the South East is under threat from the bulldozer like never before, and never more seriously than here in our borough. Population increases, longer lives, more


wealth and Kent’s commutability make this county attractive.


But the crux of it is this. Maidstone Borough Council (MBC), under orders from central Government, agreed in late 2017 to 17,600 houses in the Local Plan. The plan’s scheduled review could see another 10,500.


Quite who will buy all of them is anyone’s guess. Most people were aghast at these numbers. The roads and local services will not be able to cope, they said. MBC has attempted to deliver these, knowing full well they are unachievable without a major rethink about roads and how to deliver essential services. The borough council tried to mitigate its plans by suggesting changes to existing road lay-outs and the risible


Unite against housing


IT HAS been a breath of fresh air to see a copy of Downs Mail again after your short absence in these strangest of times. However, the same threat of huge numbers of homes being crashed into our borough without the infrastructure to handle them remains as potent and depressing as ever. Now three years have elapsed, almost, since Maidstone Borough Council passed the Local Plan, with broad cross- party support but which I absolutely opposed. We, of course, did not realise then that the same authority would be planning to become the “master developer” of the massive Lenham Heath housing proposal, which I am very much against. There are great swathes of housing being built everywhere, most visibly on the A274 at present, but no road improvements to deal with the cars that are coming.


The best solution the unelected officers have managed to dream up is the


SIMON FINLAY Editor simon.finlay@downsmail.co.uk Twitter @Simonfinlay6500


concept of “modal shift”, ie encouraging people off the roads and onto bicycles, buses and their feet to offset the expected rise in traffic numbers. Even with a proportion of the 17,600 houses in the current MBC Local Plan delivered, it is apparent the congested, potholed roads are degrading faster than they can be repaired. Lengthy journeys are the norm, delays frequent, crashes commonplace and people’s patience stretched.


Not that the homes themselves are much to crow about. On the outer edges of the wealthier villages, large “executive” style properties are popular and they sell. What do they add to our village communities?


Closer to town, there are far more


dwellings in the “compact” style, modelled by Lord Richard Rogers’ 1998 Urban Task Force at the behest of the then Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott. If getting the 2017 Local Plan through


was fraught, the upcoming review must be seamless - and quick. Particularly so if major planning reforms set out by Government are rapidly implemented. This council, like all others, could lose democratic powers to control where developments go. We have entered a truly perilous period.


Cllr David Burton, chairman of the


ludicrous notion of “modal shift”. No one seriously believes this can work. The council needs to re-examine the


way it operates, to step aside from the idea that they know better than those people (your councillors) elected to make the decisions. The council is now officer-led, in my view, and it has to stop.


Speaking as one of the opposition group leaders, albeit a group of two members, I often feel out of the loop, first learning what is going on at this authority when I pick up this newspaper or read it online.


I am far from alone in feeling that a free press, particularly the local Press, has never been so necessary in holding the authority to book, to shine a light in the darker recesses of all tiers of government and to question methods and motives.


Now that the Government is threatening wholesale planning reforms and effectively ripping planning power away from our local authority, never will there be more need for a combined force


Strategic Planning and Infrastructure Committee, says the time for decisive action is now. Experts fear the new total to be 34,000 new homes. Yes, 34,000. It’s imperative that MBC reaches resolutions with Kent County Council, the highways authority, and they get on with it. On the table for serious discussion should be a ring road, by-passes and mini relief roads, as well as roundabout changes and highway widening. Just as local voters might be tempted to


deliver the verdict on the ruling party at the borough council elections next May, our MPs in Kent would be well-advised to go to the Prime Minister and remind him how they got in. It is not just up north where the votes are on loan. This is not nimbyism. There is nothing remotely shameful about dispraising the modern in favour of the old. It is not petty or small-minded to want to retain this part of England for England and its people, whoever they are or wherever they come from.


Our Domesday villages, the ancient stone churches, coppiced woods, oast houses, the orchards, our country lanes and their precious, peculiar old buildings are surely worth fighting for. Otherwise, this ruinous, almost reckless, pandering to “demand” will have no end until it is already too late. And that will be England gone, The shadows, the meadows, the lanes, The guildhalls, the carved choirs. There’ll be books; it will linger on In galleries; but all that remains For us will be concrete and tyres.


Philip Larkin


of people, parishes, elected councillors and our regional Press to prevent unlimited travesties being visited on what is left of this once beautiful place. Good to have you back. Cllr Eddie Powell, borough councillor, Shepway South


We’re watching you


DOWNS Mail reported in its last edition that a Conservative borough councillor had resigned the whip over a homes scheme.


Each proposal in the “call for sites” should be evaluated on sound planning. Politics should not come into play. I have heard rumblings of councillors protecting their own back yard rather than looking at each proposal for: sound planning, whether it can deliver infrastructure and is best for the borough as a whole.


Building should not be about numbers or about councils worried that national Government will take over their planning department.


Creating a car-dependant, pollution- 45


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