Garden Town application set to land

A district council leader says he has been “promised” initial plans for a controversial garden town will be submitted by the end of this week.

Outline planning permission for the Otterpool Park scheme on the former Folkestone Racecourse has previously been delayed in being submitted to Folkestone and Hythe District Council (FHDC).

But the council’s leader Cllr David Monk made the revelation during an update about the major greenfield land scheme at last week’s full council meeting, adding that a consultation is expected to launch next month.

The district council, alongside developing partners Cozumel Estates, proposes to develop 10,000 homes between Folkestone and Ashford.

Cllr Monk said: “I am promised that the outline planning permission will be applied for before the end of this month. Formal consultation will start about midMarch.”

It comes after the project was recently handed a £1.25million cash injection by the government.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government announced a £9 million cash injection to speed up the locally-led building of new garden towns and villages across the country, with Otterpool Park being awarded the largest sum of the 21 proposed schemes.

Cllr Monk added: “It seems to be taking forever but am assured that we are in fact doing extremely well compared with other green towns.

“This is probably reflected in the further £1.25m grant the government has given us to assist our masterplanning.”

The authority previously stated the formal application would be submitted in November, but shortly after pushed the timescales back to ‘early 2019’.

In addition, the news comes as the deadline approaches for FHDC’s Core Strategy Review submission draft public consultation next month.

The document sets out where thousands of homes and infrastructure will go up until 2037, at an average of 676 houses a year or 12,845 in total.

A planning inspector will then investigate the Core Strategy Review’s ‘soundness’.