Shepway's Otterpool Park – huge intrusion on landscape and villages
Shepway District Council (SDC) has announced plans for a "Garden Town" which would engulf Westenhanger, Newingreen, most of Lympne and some of Sellindge, together with up to 700 hectares (1730 acres) of countryside, bordering on the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
Somehow, the council expects local residents to support this while the leader, Cllr David Monk, answers his critics with words like "It is not green space. Most of the time it's brown, it's mud, brown mud. It's cockalooloo land. It is agricultural fields. You can't say we can't build on fields. It hardly affects anyone." (quoted in Folkestone Herald 12/5/16).
Everything in this view, as far as the windmill (white tower), would be urbanised, photo by Graham Horner
CPRE fought hard to halt the urbanisation of this area through the examination of Shepway District's Local Plan and the inspector agreed with us, throwing out proposals for just 400 houses on the Folkestone Racecourse site. Now up to 12,000 houses are contemplated in the same area. Shepway seem intent on filling up all land which is not AONB or on the Marsh with housing or allowing it to be concreted over for lorry parks.
Hilary Newport said "The garden city/village principles have merit, but CPRE believes that housing delivery should focus on putting effort into the regeneration of those brownfield sites that blight urban areas and communities. This site, by contrast, is in open countryside, near villages that are already struggling under the pressure of overdevelopment, and would be a huge intrusion on the landscape – indeed the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (a nationally important designation, equivalent in importance to a National Park) surrounds this area on three sides: walkers and riders on the North Downs Way national trail to the north would have their views across open landscape blighted."
