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Crunch time for garden villages MailMarks a


IT IS crunch time for establishing if and where new garden villages will be created around Maidstone.


The borough council must now make


signicant decisions on which development proposals are included in the updated draft Maidstone Local Plan for consideration by a Government inspector at an inquiry.


After public consultation, two garden villages are still on the agenda – Lenham Heath with around 4,000 houses proposed and Lidsing for about 2,000. Local opposition in both areas is


powerful and determined, but Maidstone Borough Council has stuck to its guns. Government has decreed another increase in the already-high level of housing to be built in the borough. Maidstone’s roles are to agree locations and endeavour to ensure supporting infrastructure.


There is no strong appetite for all this


development within the council, but government will have its way unless forced in to a political U-turn. And the huge and unexpected by-election defeat just suffered by the Conservatives in the Tory stronghold of Chesham and Amersham could be a U-turn trigger. Conservative MPs in the south east


were already pressing Government to spread the new housing load across the country. They are a powerful voting force in Parliament and now have this new signicant ammunition. Whatever the outcome of this national political battle, it seems certain Maidstone will still face a mountain of new housing. And our local problems do not go away, even if reduced.


So ultimately, will national politics lead to a change in MBC’s approach to garden villages? Probably not.


Maidstone would still likely be left with an annual Government demand for many hundreds of new houses a year and council thinking behind garden villages will probably continue. The council’s unpalatable four choices are the same: build more in an urban


Rethink planning reforms


AFTER the Conservatives lost the Chesham and Amersham by-election with a swing of 25 percentage points, Cabinet ministers and senior party members have told Boris Johnson to rethink planning reforms that have been blamed in part for the result. One minister told The Times: "We need to tread carefully on planning. We say that communities will be involved but then they're not ... The party knows we need to build more homes in this country. It's about how you take forward that shared vision with your communities.”


Maidstone is currently in the nal


DENNIS FOWLE President dennisfowle28@gmail.com


Maidstone already over-developed, with infrastructure under massive pressures; substantial extra housing around the ve unhappy villages already selected for growth (Lenham, Harrietsham, Headcorn, Staplehurst, Marden); increase housing on green or farmland spotted around the borough with limited developer funding for proper infrastructure; or go for new garden villages. The attractions of garden villages are: they are designed from scratch; the large number of houses provides a huge developer fund of money helping to build infrastructure; the village can be largely self-supporting with health and social facilities, shops, schools, employment opportunities; there is much-reduced need to travel outside. I think the council is right to investigate Lenham Heath and Lidsing. The two locations have much going for them. They are well-located for main road and rail transport and would be very popular places to live. If I lived in or around these two lovely rural parts of the borough would I welcome the proposals? Almost certainly not. It would bring me much pain, I am sure, and I sympathise with the current opponents. But if Government decides houses must be built, there are winners and losers. There will be even more losers if Maidstone has to share these 6,000 or so houses widely around our treasured countryside.


Most in Maidstone would be delighted


if Government seriously reduced housing targets and protected the countryside. But all main political parties call for more housing so I would not bet on that.


stages of its Local Plan Review. The Local Plan should give us a sound tool to manage development. The key word is “manage”. It is not the rst time that I refer to my job as an elected administrator. Central Government tells us, by their magic formula, how many houses we should build.


Our MPs then tell us that we ought to use brown-eld sites and, in any case, we should not build here...nor there…nor…best not at all in their constituencies. Well, it may have escaped your notice that Maidstone’s brown-eld sites were used up years ago and there is only so much housing we can push into the town


NHS care


WATCH out for much-improved NHS representation for Maidstone and the rest of West Kent. It is sorely needed. We used to have Maidstone Primary Care Trust, then GP-led West Kent Clinical Commissioning Group, and now Kent and Medway Clinical Commissioning Group has been given the massive task of caring for a county as huge as Kent. We should by now have a West Kent Integrated Care Partnership formed by NHS organisations and signicant local bodies such as Kent and borough councils.


The Downs Mail sees so many local health shortcomings thanks to contacts from our readers and has been pressing hard for this new partnership to take the lead at speed. Latest buzzes are much more promising.


Holy rant r


I WONDER if the outspoken Canon John Corbyn, Vicar of Bearsted, has been anticipating a call from the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby after a vitriolic political rant in his parish magazine. The Archbishop has just issued an apology and admitted deep embarrassment for the “absolutely unacceptable” behaviour of the Bishop of St Davids, who told her congregation “never trust a Tory”.


Canon Corbyn accuses political gures of “lining their own nests” while slashing help to the world’s poorest, saying some may think this “tragic or wicked”. “They apparently feel no need to account for the necessity of spending on one of their two or more homes,” he writes.


For all we expect from them (the talent, hard work and dedication) I have never felt MPs are overpaid (average salary £81,932), and allowances now strictly controlled. They are in peril if they try to overstep the boundaries.


centre. We must build houses by our masters’ dictate. The Local Plan should give us some safeguards. If we promise to build 30,000 homes in the least bad areas then we have the tools to stop additional development in even more unsuitable areas – for now. This strategy only works if we actively


full our annual housing supply target. If we don’t, the planning inspectorate will ignore our ne Local Plan. Bottom line, you may have noticed, your elected member’s options are a ne balancing act between fail and fail. What my formidable opponent at the last local election needs to realise is, had he won the count, he would have found himself in exactly the same position.


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