Edenbridge Town Council Says Planned Housing Growth Is "Excessive", Wants Two Sites Dropped

Edenbridge Town Council says the housing growth planned for the town under Sevenoaks District Council's new Local Plan is "excessive and disproportionate", and wants two large sites taken out of it. Its formal response, submitted this month as part of the Plan's Regulation 19 stage, doesn't oppose growth in principle, but argues the town has been asked to take too much of it.

The draft Local Plan allocates 2,226 new homes to Edenbridge, which the Town Council calculates is a 55.6% increase on the number of homes already there. The council wants that cut by removing two allocations, at Crouch House Road and Lingfield Road, and at land west of Lingfield Road Recreation Ground, which together account for 448 of the homes. That would bring Edenbridge's total down to around 1,778, still a 44% increase. The council says its preferred position would go further still, by also removing a third site at Breezehurst Farm, off Crouch House Road.

The Town Council's case rests on Edenbridge's size and its roads and public transport, which it says are more limited than in Sevenoaks town or Swanley. It says growth on this scale will need real investment in schools, healthcare, drainage and other infrastructure, some of which may be hard to fit into the town's existing layout, and that improving infrastructure won't fix the town's relative distance from the main road and rail network. It has submitted its own Edenbridge Infrastructure Delivery Plan alongside its response, checked against the district's own list of infrastructure projects, and made a separate response to the Plan's transport policies covering traffic modelling at the town's junctions.

Not every proposed site is opposed: the council backs the plan's separate scheme for the Four Elms Road and Skinners Lane corridor, subject to conditions it has set out in its response, and it welcomes the identification of a site for a new school.

This is one town council's formal representation, not a decision. Sevenoaks District Council will consider every Regulation 19 response before it submits the Local Plan to the Planning Inspectorate for independent examination, expected to happen by the end of this year, with public hearings likely in 2027. The whole district needs to accommodate a Government housing requirement of 17,460 homes, which the Local Plan spreads across sites in every borough town, including Edenbridge.

The council's submission also responds in detail to a proposed Gypsy and Traveller site at Seven Acre Farm, and to policies on flood risk, water supply, open space and play space, among others; those responses run to more than 150 pages and go well beyond what's summarised here. Source: Edenbridge Town Council, Edenbridge Town Council's Regulation 19 response, September 2026