Smaller estates more palatable

Whilst I would not ordinarily want to be at odds with the leader of the city council, I felt I really could not allow his remarks in the article on the proposed housing at Cooting Farm, Adisham, to pass unchallenged [‘Our village will be swamped and destroyed by 3,200-home estate’, Gazette, March 23].

Either he is being disingenuous or he has a less than complete grasp on planning issues and legislation, or he is misadvised, or he is being misreported. Your article quotes him as saying: “Large developments are better because they are more sustainable, because they bring the infrastructure with them. “If you bolt on 100 houses here and 100 houses there you don’t get anything for that.”

Well, actually as the city council has an adopted Community Infrastructure Levy, which is a levy based on each dwelling created, you get exactly the same financially for five developments of 100 houses scattered around as you would for one development of 500 houses; it’s the same ‘take’ for the council to then decide on where it wants or needs to spend it.

The only exception is where a development creates a specific problem which justifies seeking a contribution to specifically address the problem that the development creates; this is done via what is called “the S106 mechanism”.

The downside to this is that the council can only seek a contribution to solve the problem the development creates - no development = no problem = no need for a S106 contribution. In the case of Cooting Farm, Adisham if there was no development, there would be no need for a contribution as there would be no problem to be solved. Where the council falls down, as do so many others, is that in preparing its Local Plan and making planning decisions it ignores the government’s planning “rules” set out in the National Planning Policy Framework, (NPPF). Specifically the council grades hamlets, villages and settlements with policies that allow development in some, more development in some others and no development at all in many others. This does not follow government policy.

Para 79 of the NPPF indicates that in rural areas development should be permitted that will enhance and maintain the vitality of rural communities, and that development in one village might support services in another nearby village.

Para 80 includes a safeguard that “isolated” homes should not be permitted in the countryside except in very specific circumstances. The rub comes when the council, Canterbury or other, determines that an isolated home is any proposed outside a village envelope defined on a Local Plan.

A better approach to providing new development would be to allow small-scale developments at all villages, hamlets and rural settlements provided that no “harm” was done to what are called “interests of acknowledged importance”, in other words, don’t spoil the countryside, don’t spoil the historic environment and so on.

That would allow villages to grow organically, as they traditionally did, one or two houses at a time, not by tacking on huge new housing estates to a few whilst prohibiting others to live and breathe.

As these would be developments by small developers or builders, they could be built out quickly, providing homes and jobs for local people instead of forcing everyone to live on huge new estates.

And small-scale developments of a few houses at a time would be much more acceptable to local

communities as they would not feel swamped by newcomers and new development could reflect local characteristics instead of being just another housing estate.

Bob Britnell

Orchard Close, Canterbury