If you’ve seen the weekly list of Planning Applications that Dover District Council issued last Friday, it is likely you’ll have seen 3 prospective developments in neighbouring areas that Members have previously voiced their concerns about.
The first of these is a proposal for a development at Fairfield in Great Mongeham, that many of you will already be aware of widespread opposition to from local social networks. Apart from the issues being raised by local residents, this development appears to be yet another of the increasingly long list of relatively small sites that step by step appear to be creating a “Greater Deal” joining together Sholden round to Upper Walmer, and including Great Mongeham and wrapping around Mill Hill.
Because the sites are small in nature and appear to be individual one-off developments, they are not part of the Local Plan, which means nobody has been engaged with as to the appropriateness of the overall scale of development. That means no discussion about traffic, or any other kind of infrastructure, so no joined-up infrastructure investments over quite a wide area.
So you might want to take a look at the Facebook page of the “Save Fairfield Great Mongeham” campaign, and the issues they are raising, many of which are common with the Betteshanger Park objections …… Save Fairfield Great Mongeham – Say No To Planning | Facebook.
Many of you will be familiar with this site which ceased to be a garden/alpines centre pre-COVID. It has been the subject of a previous proposal as a commercial site but access to the main Dover Road was considered too problematic. Though some might think it not a bad location for a smallish development, the safe access problem remains on a stretch of road that vehicles already drive too fast on, which represents a risk to both drivers and pedestrians. There might also be a question of whether this truly is a brown field site, rather than stretching into green spaces behind existing .but must be spreading beyond what the Council might regard as brown field land into green spaces.
How many of you are familiar with what the East Kent coast looked like during Roman and Saxon Times, or what is predicted to happen due to Global warming? The Isle of Thanet was exactly that, isolated from mainland Kent by the Wantsum Channel and opposite Sandwich was the Stonar Spit, a bank of pebbles that jutted out from Thanet and sheltered Sandwich from the open North Sea.
This proposed development is on the fringes of the Discovery Park at Stonar, and is a much larger development. than the other 2. It is undoutedly a brown field site, and might otherwise have been a good location for larger-scale housing as it doesn’t affect other residential areas, but there may be a good reason for that,. There is precious little housing in Stonar, or other areas in the flood plains of the River Stour and it is reasonable to expect that the reason for that is that at some point in time global warming will take hold and most of Stonar will be lost as Mother Nature re-creates the Wansum Channel.
Food for thought I feel, and issues that many of you will, I am sure, want to pursue further.