A Maidstone Site Earmarked for New Homes Is Recommended to Stay a Builders' Merchants Instead

The former Jewson builders' merchants site on Buckland Hill, Maidstone, is allocated in the council's own Local Plan Review for a residential-led redevelopment. When it goes before Maidstone Borough Council's Planning Committee on Thursday 15 October, officers are recommending councillors approve something else entirely: four new builders'-merchant and trade-counter units, continuing the site's industrial use rather than delivering any of the homes it's earmarked for.

The application, from TBH Real Estate Investments Ltd, covers the former Jewson yard between Buckland Hill and St Peter's Street, close to the River Medway. Part of the existing building has already been partially demolished under a prior approval granted in December 2025, which is why this application is partly retrospective. The scheme now before committee would refurbish what remains into four separate units - for builders' merchants or similar trade and storage uses - with new accesses onto St Peter's Street, a re-aligned footpath, EV charging points and a retained open storage yard accessed from Buckland Hill. The case officer's report recommends approval, subject to conditions.

The report is explicit that the scheme "does not accord with the allocated residential-led redevelopment of the site" under Local Plan policy LPRSA148, and is therefore a formal departure from the Development Plan - which is why it's going to committee at all. The case for approving it anyway rests on timing: the applicant has shown there's no reasonable prospect of a housing scheme coming forward on the site in the short term, and national decision-making policy allows previously developed land to be put to effective use through this kind of development while a longer-term scheme is worked up, provided it doesn't rule housing out permanently. Officers conclude it would be unreasonable to expect the landowner to leave the site vacant for years waiting for a comprehensive residential scheme, when the economic benefits of reusing a vacant brownfield site - modern employment floorspace in a sustainable, close-to-town-centre location - aren't outweighed by any substantial harm to design, heritage, residential amenity, highway safety, drainage or ecology.

It's a telling counterpoint to the case made two miles away at South Lane, Sutton Valence, where officers are recommending 41 homes be approved on land that isn't allocated for housing at all, specifically because Maidstone's housing land supply has fallen to 3.6 years against the five it's required to show. Here, on a site the council has already earmarked for exactly that kind of housing, officers are recommending the opposite: let it carry on as it was, because the homes aren't coming anytime soon regardless of what the Local Plan says should happen.

The application is due before Maidstone's Planning Committee at the Town Hall on Thursday 15 October at 6pm, where councillors will decide whether to accept the departure from the Local Plan or hold out for the housing the site is allocated for. The full committee report and supporting documents are available via Maidstone Borough Council's planning portal under reference 26/501777/FULL.