Fears development plans will overwhelm historic town

Campaigners fear their town will be overwhelmed by housing after a council signalled the area will bear the brunt of thousands of new homes.

Swale Borough Council has recommended that future residential development should be concentrated in and around Faversham, rather than in Sheppey or Sittingbourne.

Campaigners say they will fight the “shocking” vision, arguing it will leave the town with no rural gaps between villages.

But councillors say Sheppey and Sittingbourne have already played their part in meeting housing targets.

The plans were laid out at a meeting of the council's planning and transportation policy working group, which met to decide how to deliver 17,472 new homes over the next 16 years.

Many of the homes are already in the pipeline, either with planning permission secured or awaiting a decision.

But the council needs to decide where the remaining developments should be built.

Campaigner Sarah Moakes said: “It’s nothing to do with where the need is greatest. It’s quite shocking really that we might be railroaded into having all the development at this end for nothing other than political reasons.”

The authority’s Local Plan for the period 2014-2031 has lapsed and it is looking to produce a new one up to 2040.

Group members who argued that the housing target is “excessive” eventually opted for a “very large” site in the east of the borough, which would take pressure off building in other areas.

The council said the new Local Plan will take into account sites from the previous document that have been allocated but not built on, and developments that are in the works.

Those homes would be “split between a very large strategic site in the east of the borough and the remainder distributed proportionately by settlement size across the borough”, a spokesperson said.

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