Housing and Growth Areas

Campaign date: 14-01-2008

The Government wants to increase house building in England from the current level (2006/7) of 180,000 homes per year to 240,000, giving a total of three million new dwellings by 2020. Kent is facing at least 120,000 new homes by 2027 – a 20% increase on current levels.

Much of Kent’s new housing will be in two ‘growth areas’, allocated in the Government’s Sustainable Communities Plan of 2003. Ashford could double in size by 2030, with 31,000 new homes, and in the Thames Gateway, which includes much green land in north Kent, there are plans for over 100,000 new dwellings.

More than any other form of development, house building threatens the destruction or degradation of unspoilt countryside in Kent. To preserve the best of our natural environment, it is vital that we put the right types of housing in the right places, and hold back a free-for-all of greenfield house building by private developers.

For this to happen we need a strong planning system which makes environmental protection its highest priority. Yet a series of proposed planning reforms appear expressly designed to weaken land-use restrictions, even in protected areas such as Green Belt.

Two Government planning papers – one white and one green – and the proposed reorganisation of regional government threaten a dangerous reduction in democratic accountability in planning and the introduction of a more development-friendly agenda in land-use legislation.

CPRE is fighting hard against potential reform which would weaken countryside protection. Our national office has challenged many of the Government’s assumptions about house building and affordability, establishing that the large-scale release of land for building would make little difference to affordability.

In Kent, we support the construction of subsidised housing in the countryside as an antidote to the unaffordability which is driving many country people away from the areas in which they grew up. See, below, our affordable rural housing policy and an article on the subject from the spring 2007 issue of Kent Voice magazine.

We identified major shortcomings in the planning of Ashford’s future growth in our November 2007 report Greater Ashford: A Vision in Peril? The report has been extremely effective in publicising the risk to the town posed by housing growth that is not matched by the provision of jobs and essential infrastructure. It can be downloaded below, and is available in hard copy from our branch office.

In September 2005, a CPRE London report – Thames Gateway: from Rhetoric to Reality – identified major potential pitfalls in the Governments plans for the growth area. The report was followed up in November 2007 by Focus on the Thames Gateway 2. Both these reports can be downloaded below or ordered from our branch office. 

Across Kent, our district committees analyse every planning application, most of which are for housing, and support or object according to whether the applications clash with our policies. They are also monitoring the evolution of Local Development Frameworks, the blueprints for medium-term development which have replaced Local Plans. Brian Lloyd, CPRE Kent’s Senior Planner, is assisting them in this work.

For advice on a planning application which is causing concern, and contact details for our district committees, please contact us.

Attachments:

Campaign Issues

• Kent Science Park - Sittingbourne
• Lower Thames Crossing
• Thames Gateway
• China Gateway