Homes plan means 25 years of mess

A good piece last week regarding the outcome of the highly-charged council meeting that, despite so much anti-feeling, saw fit to approve the building of thousands of properties at Chilmington Green (‘After five hours, it’s a YES’).

Anyone bothering to read the arguments from the ‘pros’ and ‘antis’ would find it very difficult to see how this approval could have been granted at all!

It now appears that for some 25 years, the whole area around the building site will be a complete mess!

Surely if Ashofrd Borough Council has any clout at all, and is not simply bowing to external pressures, it would make so much more sense to reconsider the following basic considerations:

a) as Peter Williamson said, there is no provision at all for improved or even new hospital arrangements, so how on earth does the highly overstretched William Harvey take on board something like 12,000 to 15,000 additional residents?

Why not insist that the various developers make certain that monies are spent NOW on the necessary improvements needed at the William Harvey? If left to the end, how easy it would be for the developers to say that they had run out of cash!

b) Much the same sentiments must apply to the infrastructure in general.

Let’s see new roads, schools and other amenities coming on stream well before any major completion of new properties.

c) As I recall, Ashford International was to become the rail centre for travel into Europe!

Well, we all know what happened there. The experts chucked that baby out with the bath water and simply developed St Pancras as the focal point for the Eurotunnel!

The subsequent plans for a new garden city at Ebbsfleet makes so much more sense as the site is basically a wilderness and any development would be attractive and not involve concreting hundreds of acres of green fields.

d) A cursory trip around the borough will quickly confirm just how many brownfield sites there are, awaiting development, which will enhance the areas in question without upsetting the ambience of that particular areas

Reader Colin Davis cannot understand why the Chilmington Green development was approved