Tonbridge and Malling

Development pressure in Tonbridge & Malling has been particularly intense recently, despite the fact that much of the borough is in the Metropolitan Green Belt and/or the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB).

The following issues are of particular concern to CPRE T&M at the moment:

Proposed gritting-lorry depot at Wrotham
Kent County Council has chosen London Road (the A20) in Wrotham as a site for a Kent Highways “Super Depot” which would include lorry parking, office space and a huge salt store. From this base, gritting lorries would operate 24 hours a day in freezing weather to grit all the roads of west Kent.

While the site is not in deepest countryside – the M20 and M26 run nearby – it is 70% greenfield and lies entirely inside the Green Belt and AONB. KCC asserts that the Wrotham scheme is justified because Kent Highways stands to make efficiency savings by closing five depots across the county and basing all its operations at Wrotham and Ashford (for the east of the county).

CPRE Kent is appalled that KCC is ignoring its own landscape-protection policies with regard to the Wrotham depot. Kent stands to lose green AONB land, but more importantly, a precedent would be set if the depot was allowed to go ahead: anyone could claim that an unproven economic imperative justified their building on green, protected land.

KCC passed its application for the Wrotham depot in March 2007. CPRE Kent responded by applying for a judicial review of the decision, in partnership with Wrotham Parish Council. In October 2007 leave to proceed to judicial review was granted, to take place at some point in 2008 unless an agreement is reached with KCC first.

You can download a copy of our objection to the planning application below.

H+H Celcon factory proposal, Borough Green
Again in partnership with Wrotham Borough Council, as well as the local group Keep Boroughs Green, CPRE Kent secured a major victory in August 2007 against the developer H+H Celcon, which had planned to build a concrete-block factory in the AONB and Green Belt.

KCC strongly supported the application because Celcon had promised to build a bypass for Borough Green in return for planning permission (KCC has wanted the bypass since 1991 but has consistently failed to secure Highways Agency funding). The application was called in for public inquiry for May 2007.

We established at the inquiry that planning permission for the bypass had expired, and began judicial review proceedings against the county council. Celcon withdrew its application and, for the moment at least, the countryside around Borough Green has been saved from development.

KCC has since announced plans to fast-track planning permission for the bypass, and we are watching developments closely.

Update 27-02-08:
Contrary to reports in the local press, Kent County Council has not reached an agreement to purchase land from H+H Celcon for £1 so that the council can go ahead with the Borough Green/Platt Bypass). Apparently, KCC and H+H Celcon cannot agree on costs incurred in the planning application and subsequent inquiry.

Download Sean Furey’s Kent Voice article about the collapse of Celcon’s plans below.

Application for a 139-bed hotel at Wrotham
It is believed that the existing extant permission for this development has expired.  A postponement of the decision has been requested, to which Tonbridge & Malling Borough Council has agreed, so that this can be investigated further.

Yaldham Manor, Kemsing
An application involving the restoration of the manor house via the enabling development of 14 modern dwellings has been refused by Tonbridge & Malling Borough Council. It is expected, however, that the developers will come back with a new application. The CPRE T & M committee did not object to the proposal in principle, but felt that the design of the proposed dwellings was utterly inappropriate for the setting.

Elsewhere, the committee has recently (February 2008) objected both to the new entry/exit junction from the A228 at Kings Hill and to a four-storey private hospital campus at Hoath Wood, Lavenders Road, West Malling.

Attachments:

District Issues

• Wrotham Super Highways Depot
• Celcon factory Ightham
• Tomorrow's Kent
• Stop BIG! (aka KRAFT)