Wateringbury's 66-Home Green Belt Scheme Is Refused for a Second Time

A plan to build 66 homes on a Green Belt field on the edge of Wateringbury has been refused by Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council's planning committee - the second time councillors have turned it down.

The application, from Croudace Homes, is for land north of Drayhorse Meadow, off Fields Lane, on the south side of Tonbridge Road. The 4.4-hectare site is a field currently used for horse grazing. The scheme would provide 66 two-storey houses - a mix of one- to four-bedroom homes - with half of them affordable, along with open space, landscaping, a new access onto Tonbridge Road and a secondary emergency access.

The land sits in the Metropolitan Green Belt, immediately next to the village, and is classed as best and most versatile agricultural land. Croudace argues it should be treated as "grey belt" - lower-quality Green Belt land the Government now expects councils to release for housing. A stretch of Tonbridge Road near the Bow Road junction, close to the site access, is an Air Quality Management Area, meaning pollution there already breaches national limits.

Council planning officers had recommended approval, advising that the development would not conflict with the authority's environmental policies. The committee disagreed. On 23 July it voted 10-3 to refuse, citing the harm the scheme would do to the character and openness of the Medway Valley landscape and the effect of extra traffic on air quality at the Wateringbury crossroads. It followed an earlier refusal of the same scheme.

The application was called in to committee by a ward councillor specifically so that members could weigh the Green Belt, landscape and air-quality issues themselves. Opposition has been organised through Protect Our Medway Valley, an alliance of residents and parish and borough councillors convened by Wateringbury resident Dave Mitchelmore, which raised money to commission its own landscape assessments and take legal advice.

Croudace Homes can appeal the refusal to the Planning Inspectorate, which would take the decision out of the borough council's hands, and campaigners say they expect it to do so. For now the field stays as it is, but - as with the contested schemes at Otford and around Tonbridge - the wider fight over how much of West Kent's protected countryside is built on is far from settled. Source: Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council