Council Hands Over £250,000 to Rescue Affordable Homes at Horsmonden Development

Tunbridge Wells Borough Council is putting £250,000 of its own Section 106 money into a housing development in Horsmonden, after the scheme's developer found that no housing association could afford to buy the affordable homes it is contractually obliged to provide - a gap the council has now stepped in to close rather than see the affordable housing shrink.

The development, on land south of Brenchley Road, already has outline planning permission for 68 homes, 27 of them affordable - 16 for social rent and 11 shared ownership, a mix of flats and houses. Under the Section 106 agreement attached to that permission, the developer, Fernham Homes, has to sell the affordable homes to a Registered Provider at a fixed, below-market price. According to a council report, Town & Country Housing looked at buying them and turned the offer down as unviable. West Kent Housing Association was willing to proceed, but only on the basis that the council would subsidise the purchase - without that money, Fernham Homes said it would fall back to a 50:50 tenure split instead, cutting two four-bedroom social-rent homes from the scheme.

The site plan, approved by the council in April under a separate "reserved matters" application, shows the 68 homes arranged in small clusters around looping access roads and parking courts, set behind landscaped green space and existing tree belts along the site's southern and eastern edges. Designed by Clague Architects for Fernham Homes, the houses are a traditional mix of two-storey brick-and-tile-hung family homes with gabled roofs, in keeping with Horsmonden's existing streetscape. A separate plot fronting Brenchley Road is set aside for a new village hall, which is not part of this housing permission and will need its own application. Work on access and drainage is already under way, with detailed conditions covering landscaping, external materials and boundary treatments submitted to the council as recently as July.

The Cabinet Member for Housing and Communities, Cllr Corinna Keefe, approved the subsidy on 22 October, acting on a report from the council's Affordable Housing and Enabling Officer. The money is not new council spending - it comes from Section 106 affordable housing contributions the council already holds, collected from two unrelated developments elsewhere in the borough: the former Kent & Sussex Hospital site, and 24-38 Commercial Road in Paddock Wood. Officers will now be authorised to enter a grant agreement with West Kent Housing Association to release the funds. The decision took effect on 30 October, once the standard call-in period passed with no councillor having asked to challenge it.

The council's report leans on its own waiting-list figures to make the case for intervening: 633 households across the borough are currently assessed as being in housing need, and of those, 54 have specifically named Horsmonden as a place they want to live. The village has had relatively little new affordable housing built in recent years, and officers argued that losing two of the 27 affordable homes already secured through planning would make that shortage worse rather than better. Practical completion of the affordable homes is expected by May 2029.

Source: Tunbridge Wells Borough Council, Cabinet Member decision, 22 October 2026, officer report, and the council's planning register for application 25/02758/REM. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.