The University of Kent has proposed building a new settlement of 2,000 houses, shops and offices on a massive greenfield site in the heart of The Blean
Development mismanagement — planning fiasco
by
New councillors, on taking up their role, will usually get a talk from the head of planning telling them that the purpose of planning law is to protect the public interest.
The minority of councillors who undertake the planning role conscientiously will discover, as I did in 12 years as a councillor — 10 as vice-chair of the planning committee — that far from protecting the public interest, the rules and procedures and omissions act to do the opposite. As we shall see, the blame for that rests totally on the shoulders of central government, which has failed us abysmally over the last half century.
The public interest is not defined. It is determined by those remote from local people. One thing is certain and that is that there is no democracy in planning. All this is coming to the fore as the new Labour/Liberal Dem-led district council (since May 2023) takes its turn at going through the motions of the next Local Plan.
Because we do not live under a Stalinist rule, the district council lacks any ability to take control of land and to build in the best interests of the local area and its resident population. Compulsory purchase is used rarely by local authorities and is normally reserved for major national infrastructure projects like HS2.
Because of this, the first stage is the “call for sites”, where landowners are invited to put forward land that they regard as suitable for development.
There is an obvious profit motive here, but some farmers may put forward agricultural land close to populated areas that has been subject of trespass and damage to crops and livestock in order that they can buy more suitable land elsewhere.
Sites will be assessed by council planning officers and senior councillors. In practice this means rejecting the less desirable sites that are seen as unviable or unsuitable because of potential disadvantageous impact.
I am aware that the last administration discounted a number of locations, one of which was the Blean site.
Against these considerations is a background of government diktat as to how many houses each authority should be expected to build, so although some sites are initially rejected, they may be taken up later due to pressure to satisfy number targets. These numbers are notional, being based on perceived need, and here is perhaps the greatest controversy given that the planners seem unable to differentiate the meaning of the word need from demand.
We know that a substantial number of new houses are taken up by those moving down seeking to escape the ills of London living. Much of this has been fired up by immigration, with many migrants seeking to live in the large conurbations where others with similar language and cultural backgrounds already exist in significant numbers. This creates population pressure on existing communities and some elect to move away. The matter has been exacerbated further by higher city crime rates and the increased take-up of working from home. The real need in this area is for genuinely affordable housing for those with local ties.
Once the selection has been finalised, the draft plan is prepared and is put out for public consultation.
It is important that people respond to this but few do, given what they see as the inevitability of the development process.
Following consultation, some modifications may be made to the plan, and then the whole lot is subject to a public enquiry led by the all-powerful planning inspector, who effectively acts as an agent of central government.
Ultimately a final plan is produced, which goes before the full council, which will usually rubber-stamp it given that, if rejected, with no Local Plan, any developer can come forward in respect of any site and will attempt to bulldozer that through the planning process.
This is easier for them if the planned build figures for the district are below the government target.
I have simplified this somewhat, but that is generally how things work.
Once development is in the Local Plan, attempts to prevent building on approved sites become extremely difficult, notwithstanding the fact that each and every significant development has to go before the planning committee of the council.
One third of the council members sit on the planning committee. Some councillors avoid it because, if done conscientiously, it means a huge amount of work, research, study and time examining controversial sites. Quite often I would spend an entire weekend scrutinising papers and preparing arguments, particularly if I was minded to go against officer recommendations.
Some councillors turn up, say nothing and merely push a button to vote, often taking the line of least resistance, and it was obvious to me that some had not even attempted to read their papers.
Decisions and arguments have to be based on planning law and not on party lines. This means occasionally unpopular decisions are made which can conflict with a councillor’s wish to get re-elected.
Few councillors have either the wit or inclination to contest the recommendations of an officer but they will sometimes follow the pack if an individual councillor has taken it upon him or herself to do the homework.
Against this background there is often put the veiled threat that to go against an officer’s recommendation could mean an expensive appeal, with costs awarded against the council if the rejection was determined as unreasonable by the tin god of an unelected and often distant planning inspector.
When it comes to appeals, the big developers can afford the best lawyers. Applications granted on appeal mean that local considerations can be overlooked. The housing opposite Tesco at Whitstable was rejected by the planning committee as the land was earmarked for industry but this was granted on appeal. What materialised was over-dense and lacked sufficient parking with narrow roads, resulting in double yellow lines going down because the pavements were obstructed.
So, in the final analysis, the planning committee exists as a pure sop to democracy with little power other than to delay matters on occasions and to limit damage if well founded arguments are put across.
An officer recommendation often comes across as a fait accompli.
The public can speak at meetings and well-prepared arguments can get results, but there is no opportunity to cross-examine planning officers or the developer.
This contrasts totally with licensing committee hearings — I chaired licensing for eight — where a single application for a drinks licence can take a whole day, there is always a site visit and all parties get an opportunity to cross-examine witnesses and applicants.
Planning Applications are bulldozed through with only three minutes for each speaker, with speakers limited in number. Even large-scale developments that can have a profound effect on the district are often dealt with in no more than an hour.
It remains a shame that the majority of council planning officers are young in years and experience. Many are very bright, diligent and work well with councillors who take the trouble to engage with them, but it is unfortunate that those with promise are often snapped up by development firms, which pay considerably more for their services.
The same applies to planning lawyers. Good lawyers get snapped up by developers, and — all too often but not in every case — councils end up with what is left over.
This does not bode well for good planning, as the side promoting the public interest does not get the same level of investment.
A good councillor will engage with planning officers at an early stage of a development and, providing an officer is present, can engage with developers to help ensure that damage is limited and that the local community gets the best deal in terms of infrastructure, open space and other facilities.
When a development tsunami is heading in your direction, it is no good taking to the ramparts if one will be wiped out, when direct engagement can mitigate the damage.
One must not be totally over-jaundiced by the planning process. There are some good developers out there who will actively and positively engage, and it must be remembered that creating a genuinely good development will not only benefit the existing and future community but it will help sell houses. This has been achieved locally.
Central Government
I shall now move on to the role of central government.
As a collector of Ladybird books, I have sometimes quoted the Ladybird Story of Houses & Homes. The section on the law and houses reads: “A famous act of Parliament, passed in 1875, stopped the greedy building of large numbers of small houses crammed together. Local authorities were given the power to insist that every house had to fulfil certain conditions … every house had its own small garden, a living room, a kitchen and outhouses … there were two good-sized bedrooms and a small one, and proper arrangements for sewage.”
At the end of the First World War, with the publication of the Tudor Walters Report, homes were built in large numbers under the Housing Act of 1919.
Houses were built with no more than 12-per-acre density, with useable gardens where people could relax and grow their own food. There was a massive council house building programme. In 1914, 1 per cent of families lived in council accommodation: by 1939 it was 14 per cent.
As writer and philosopher George Santayana said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” And with such short memories, we did exactly that.
At least the Victorian slums have not been rebuilt, but in the 1980s, Thatcher sold off the council houses, and since then the proceeds have been plundered by central government so local councils were unable to build new ones.
Now locally we have a requirement of 30 per cent new builds to be affordable — but developers often successfully argue that this has to be reduced because of other costs. Affordable often means “unaffordable” in reality, and other schemes such as shared ownership require careful reading of the small print, with pitfalls over the horizon.
And then in 2012 a new planning law document heralded a new dawn: the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF).
The ministerial forward signed by Greg Clark reads: In recent years planning has tended to exclude rather than include people and communities. In part this has been a result of targets being imposed and decisions taken by bodies remote from them… By replacing over 1,000 pages of national policy with around 50, written simply and clearly, we are allowing people and communities back into planning.
Oh dear! Since publication in 2012 it has been updated four times. It is now 65 pages long and, surprise, surprise, the ministerial forward had been deleted. I wonder why?
The NPPF goes on to say: Planning law requires that applications for planning permission be determined in accordance with the development plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise.
But who determines the local plan?
We are effectively excluded by the imposition of the body remote from us: the Planning Inspectorate.
As I indicated at the outset, there is no democracy in planning.
developers’ charter
In essence, the NPPF is nothing more than a developers’ charter which can be interpreted flexibly.
The lawyers love it. Things that are important, and some vital to our survival as a nation, are neglected.
In respect of biodiversity, we have a new expression. It would appear that wildlife corridors are being swept aside in favour of “stepping stones”.
Such might be appropriate for a population of kangaroos, but locally, corridors and wildlife bridges are essential to prevent the segmentation of the Blean.
We no longer have the maximum densities of 12 homes per acre as outlined by Tudor Walters. Instead we have a large section headed Making effective use of land coupled with talk of minimum densities which, according to Ladybird, would mean “the greedy building of large numbers of small houses crammed together”.
In other words, we now have government support for what I often called the Sardine School of Development Management.
There is no mention anywhere of the importance of food security and our agriculture. There is no prescription for solar panels on all factories and new builds. Instead we take agricultural land out of genuine production with unnecessary solar farms that besmirch the landscape.
There is no prescription for the construction of large-scale waste water treatment as conditional to development despite the huge national environmental crisis affecting our rivers and seas.
And finally there is no consideration of a regional policy to take the pressure off already congested, polluted and overpopulated areas.
It will come as no surprise to the reader to note that between 2019 and 2021, property developers paid £18 million into Tory coffers: a clear conflict of interest that smacks of a broken and unbalanced planning system devoid of integrity, where commercial considerations reign supreme when measured against the public interest.
Ashley Clark was born in Whitstable and went to local schools. He retired from Kent Police as Head of the Frontier Operations Department after a varied 30 year career and spent much time working with French counterparts. For the next 15 years he taught history taking thousands of school children to the battlefields of France and Belgium. In 2011 he was elected a Councillor on Canterbury City Council and served for the next 12 years over 10 of which were spent as Vice Chair of Planning and Chair of Licensing. Prior to leaving the Council he served as Cabinet member for Open Spaces and Enforcement. Since 2005 he has led the group of volunteers that manages Duncan Down in partnership with the Council and has taken it from a mere thirty acres to ninety acres in order to create what is now the Gorrell Valley Nature Reserve. This was accomplished by 3 successful village green applications and protracted negotiations with a developer ( They built on 30 acres and but gave up 40 for wildlife and the local community).
The group have gained 18 successive green flag awards for excellence in managing the site. In his spare time he likes to swim offshore with his Labradors.
He was recently appointed as an Alderman of the City of Canterbury in recognition of his service to the Council.
Save The Blean is an action group made up of local residents, students, conservationists, farmers and members of the Canterbury community. We are non party-political and separate from the local Parish Councils.
Links to our website: www.savetheblean.org
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1131073134585951
Email address: info@savetheblean.org
Consultation – How to Respond: https://www.savetheblean.org/consultation/
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Whitstable Views 
Thank you for a very interesting and informative
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