Maidstone Opens Its Own Call for Sites as New Local Plan Process Begins

Maidstone Borough Council has launched a 'Call for Sites', inviting landowners, developers, agents and members of the public to submit land for consideration as part of its new Local Plan. It's an early, low-key opening move in a process that readers of this site will recognise the shape of already: Sevenoaks and Tonbridge & Malling are both mid-fight over their own Local Plans, wrestling with Green Belt land and steep Government housing targets. Maidstone's version starts here, with submissions covering a wide range of uses — not just housing, but employment, retail, leisure, green space, renewable energy and community infrastructure too.

It's worth being clear about what this stage actually is, because it's easy to overread it. The council is explicit that putting a site forward does not mean it will be considered suitable for development, or that it will end up allocated in the Local Plan at all — every submission faces what the council calls detailed and transparent assessment, covering environmental impact, infrastructure capacity and sustainability. This is a gathering-of-information exercise, not a planning decision, and residents who see a nearby field submitted shouldn't take that as anything more than a landowner testing the water.

The underlying driver is the same one already playing out across the borough's neighbours: national planning legislation requires every council to prepare and maintain an up-to-date Local Plan, using a standard Government calculation to work out local housing need, as part of a wider national push to get enough homes built. Cllr Tony Harwood, the council's Cabinet Member for Planning Policy and Management, framed the ambition in more local terms, saying the aim is to "help us shape a truly sustainable approach to future residential development within the borough," while also protecting what he called "our most cherished landscapes." Whether those two goals stay compatible once real sites and real numbers are on the table is, going by what's happened elsewhere in West Kent this year, very much the question that ends up defining these processes.

For anyone with land to put forward, or just watching the process, the deadline for submissions is 23 August 2026 — a little over a week away. Guidance notes and the official submission form are available via the council's Let's Talk Maidstone consultation portal, and the Strategic Planning Team can be reached at ldf@maidstone.gov.uk or on 01622 602000 for enquiries. This Call for Sites stage doesn't itself involve public comment, but the council says residents, businesses and communities will get that chance later, as the Local Plan moves through its consultation stages — the point at which a quiet administrative step usually turns into the kind of contested public debate Sevenoaks and Tonbridge & Malling are living through right now. Source: Maidstone Borough Council