Changing visions for town’s future

Just like today, there was a new plan in the 1960s

Maidstone’s local plan setting out how the area will develop in the next 14 years is in its final stages – after years of discussion.

As the KM reported last week, one of the first big tests of the plan has been reached, as councillors raise worries over traffic from extra housing in Sutton Road – something a government inspector said could be mitigated.

The 417-page local plan has been examined by Robert Mellor, who produced a 71-page report and listed a further 57 pages of changes after examining 182 documents at the hearings.

This prompted borough councillor Cynthia Robertson to hark back to simpler days.

Mrs Robertson has been the representative for Allington ward for 19 years, but her late husband, Malcolm, had been a councillor for more than 30 years when he died in 2012.

She dug out a precursor to the local plan, a Maidstone draft town centre map from 1968, listing the borough’s plans up to 1982.

Like the local plan, it set out the development objectives of the council of the day, which were: providing a new road network, enabling the shopping core of the town to be pedestrian only, establishing a footpath system for those on foot.

Other goals were giving adequate rear access to shops and car parks, the comprehensive redevelopment of three “obsolete areas” of the town and to establish three conservation areas to protect buildings of historic interest.

The document noted with a population of 66,000 (the population today is around 170,000) the existing street pattern was “outdated and being overwhelmed by the increasing traffic flows and resulting parking requirements”.

One of the aims was to provide 12,000 parking spaces for shop- pers and visitors. Today the town centre has 4,229 places (counting Fremlin Walk and The Mall Chequers).

Another aim was a “ring road” around the town centre. In January 1974, plans were approved for an inner ring road, covering the bridge over the river and areas around part of Fairmeadow.

This became the gyratory as we know today in 1978, when a new bridge was opened up over the Medway after the old stone bridge, built in 1879, become too congested.

The 1968 plan was produced on one sheet of double-sided paper that folded up into eight A5-size pages.

The 1968 plans for an inner ring road, taking in Maidstone Bridge, shown above with work under way in the 1970s, evolved into the gyratory system now ‘enjoyed’ by residents and visitors

Fremlins Brewery, 1974, before making way for the Fremlin Walk shopping centre. Right, last week’s paper

Cllr Cynthia Robertson looks back to when a ‘local plan’ was just a few sides of A5 paper, as with the Maidstone Draft Town Centre Map in 1968, right