Campaigners unite to fight plans for 15,600 new homes

aclaridge@thekmgroup.co.uk Residents’ groups across Canterbury have joined forces to fight the city council’s vision for the future.

They are presenting a united front in an effort to persuade the council to rethink much of the new draft Local Plan – the planning blueprint for the next 18 years.

Calling themselves the Alliance of Canterbury Residents’ Associations (ACRA), the group believes the council should the reduce the number of homes to be built from 15,600 to 11,000.

It says there has been a lack of consultation and it wants to protect greenfield land in the south of the city from development.

Chairman Clive Church said: “There is a unanimous rejection of the surge in numbers of houses proposed, which would be 36% higher than recent building.

“These are justified neither by the need to create jobs nor by the need to satisfy local opinion.

“No more than 600 houses a year would provide for enough jobs and meet the needs of demographic change. The council seems to imagine that three houses will be needed to produce one job.

“There is absolutely no explanation why the bulk of the new houses should be in south Canterbury and Sturry.

“More than 50% of the new houses planned would be in the city. This is clearly unbalanced. More specifically, the idea of planting 4,000 houses in south Canterbury is grotesquely disproportionate.

“It would also entail eating up valuable agricultural land, interfering with an area of high landscape value and threaten the gap between Canterbury and Bridge.”

ACRA estimates that 500 to 600 homes per year would be enough to satisfy the district’s housing needs.

Like many critics of the draft plan, it believes it was wrongly created to serve the needs of property developers.

Prof Church went on: “For some associations the plan’s commitment to growth at all costs is evidence of out of date and inappropriate thinking. Resisting the precise proposals is not nimbyism but is in line with the real needs of British society and its environment.”

However, the residents do support some objectives of the plan.

“These include community development, historic environment, houses of multi-occupancy and other aspects of housing policy, landscape and biodiversity, open spaces, quality of life, sustainable development, town centres and transport,” Prof Church added.

“But in all cases this support was conditioned by the feeling that, as with housing, the policies were unlikely to be achieved because of the proposed housing targets and locations.”

What do you think? Email kentishgazette@thekmgroup. co.uk or write to Gazette House, 5-8 Boorman Way, Wraik Hill, Whitstable, CT5 3SE.

Professor Clive Church is leading the fight against the house-building plans