Outline plan for 1,461 home Humber’s Mill development off Nash Road

The site masterplan (Axis Land Partnerships)

An outline planning application has been lodged for the Humber’s Mill development proposal of 1,461 homes, a two-form entry primary school, shops, cafes and health care services in a mixed use community hub and 22 hectares of green space at Nash Road.

The proposal from developer Axis Land Partnerships is for a 67-hectare site of predominantly agricultural land to the west of Nash Road, and close to Westwood Cross Shopping Centre and also includes a new strategic link road along Nash Road which will mean the demolition of two barns at Nash Court Farm and alterations to existing junctions from Nash Road and Manston Court Road.

The proposed development site

Plans include around 22 hectares of green, open space. Features being considered for the new neighbourhood include gardens, adventure playgrounds, walking trails, sports and leisure spaces, and a central village green.

A 2ha area of land at the west of the site is proposed as Chalkhole Farm Roadside Nature Area. It is proposed that it will not be accessible to the public but will be managed as grassland habitat.

A heritage park will be created where a Bronze Age ring ditch is located and there are proposals for a community orchard.

The new homes will be a mix of 1 bedroom to 5 bedroom properties. The developer says up to 30% will be affordable housing.

Existing bridleways and public rights of way through the Site will be retained and incorporated into the site layout.

Axis Land Partnerships

Planning documents confirm the use of the site by protected species of breeding birds, foraging bats, and barn owl. An Outline Biodiversity & Ecology Mitigation, Management, Monitoring and Enhancement Plan will be provided for each phase of development. Mitigation will target habitat creation for species known to be present in the area, for example provision of bat roosts, bird boxes, reptile and invertebrate hibernacula/ refugia, and hedgehog houses where appropriate. There will be tree planting and landscaping and  sustainable drainage systems will be integrated throughout the site.

The developer says: “It is estimated that a minimum of 269 gross direct, indirect and induced jobs will be supported by the construction phase. The total Gross Value Added from these jobs equates to an estimated £17.9 million.

“It is estimated the development will support 125 net additional jobs which would help to generate an estimated £2m Gross Value Added for the economy.

“The benefits of the proposal include delivery of up to 1,461 new dwellings, up to 30% of which will be affordable housing that will contribute to meeting local housing need.

Axis Land Partnerships

“The proposal also incorporates land for a primary school and a mixed-use community hub which will provide an element of job creation and will serve residents in the local area. A sensitive landscape strategy is proposed which makes provision for at least 10% biodiversity net gain, to encourage outdoor activity and play, for new and existing residents.”

In 2021/22 Axis Land Partnerships held community consultation on the proposals via website, newsletters and in-person event and webinars.

The aim is for construction to start during 2024/25 and continue for a period of 15 years.

The site was selected for housing in Thanet District Council’s adopted Local Plan.

You can view the Humber’s Mill website for more details about the proposed development or find it on Thanet council’s planning portal, reference OL/TH/23/0685.

St John’s College Cambridge

The proposal is one of several developments on land in Thanet owned by St John’s College Cambridge which since 1511 has specialised in theology and the arts. Over the last 4 centuries it has grown its base of investment to support its educational endeavours.

St John’s College Cambridge also owns:

  • Crumps Farm, Birchington
  • Gore End Farm Birchington – plus planning application submitted with adjoining landowner for up to 1,650 homes.
  • Cleve Court Farm in Monkton, 310 Hectares.
  • Shuart Farm, St Nicholas At Wade, Kent, 192 Hectares
  • Docker Hill Farm, Monkton, 137 Hectares.
  • Land adjacent to Shuart Farm, St. Nicholas At Wade, 15.7 Hectares
  • Further land at Nash Court Farm, 4.86 Hectares
  • Garden rear of Acol Cottage 0.14 Hectares

In 2016 St John’s College was reported as owning approximately 18,000 acres of agricultural land around England as well as a large and diverse property portfolio encompassing shops, offices, leisure facilities, industrial units, residential properties and ground rents. It is reported as having  £780.1m consolidated assets.

48 Comments

  1. A bit excessive. There won’t be any green space left in Thanet.
    An urgent task for the new administration is to get the Local Plan updated to restrict the absurd number of new homes being built.

    • Bring me up to speed Phyliss, wasn’t it TDC policy to build only on Brown Field sites, before Green Field? There is a massive Brown Field site begging to be built on for housing at Manston, shy isn’t that being considered first, before this development?

      • Manston Airport is privately owned land by RSP. Would you like to try and persuade RSP to sell the land for housing. Of course this would be on top of the planning permissions either granted or granted on appeal this site potentially adding a further 3-4,000 dwellings on top of the 17.200 planed till 2031 but not including the additional 5,000 in the planning pipeline for 2031-2036. Shall we say by 2036 Fanet will have an additional 30,000 dwellings rating from 1 bed up to 5 bed homes.

      • I expect quite a few people think that RSP will either build housing on the ex-airport site or sell it to housing developers.

  2. Well there is a record number of people in need of affordable housing, private rents are a joke, how many of these would be social housing ?

    • none will be social housing – affordable housing is just another term for private properties for sale or rent a bit below the usual market value – Councils have to build or buy social housing, but in creating Right to Buy Thatcher prevented local councils from replacing most of the housing stock they were forced to sell

  3. How are doctor’s,dentists , schools, hospitals meant to cope and who are all these people needing affordable homes coming from.where are the jobs with decent salaries and how many people living in Thanet now need 4 and 5 bedrooms

    • That would be the issue, but do you know how much rents are up compared to people lucky enough to be in social housing, and people with families id say..Affordable or not people will buy them to rent out and they would still need doctors and dentists, whcih as you may be aware you cant get doctors appointments for love nor money

    • That would be the issue, but do you know how much rents are up compared to people lucky enough to be in social housing, and people with families id say..Affordable or not people will buy them to rent out and they would still need doctors and dentists, whcih as you may be aware you cant get doctors appointments these days

  4. The roads around this area aren’t designed to handle all the traffic that all these developments, you will bring the traffic to a gridlock.

  5. And as usual the naysayers are off. How many of them would support zero migration and forced expulsion of any people here illegally and the end of accepting asylum seekers?
    Add in reducing the welfare state to force the return to work of those happy to live on benefits , doing the minimum hours they can if any?
    Make the economy attractive to those who innovate and invest?
    Without doing all of these, we’ll just keep growing the population and they have to live somewhere, many want to live in the southeast ( or are we to forcibly relocate people?) So houses have to be built.
    Other constructive solutions are welcome if someone can solve the conundrum.

  6. Plenty of land to be built on in Scotland or Northern counties or the green fields of Norfolk we are full here our local population have places to live why encourage more and more , we cannot look after the kids or the elderly or the sick as it is. The Liebour council will just say ok go ahead and in ten years they’ll do the same again because the me population will grow and want more.

    • Many local people don’t have anywhere to live. It’s social housing we now need.

      It’s “Labour” not “Liebour”, by the way.

        • “Many local people don’t have anywhere to live” I wonder if”*” actually understands what that implies. As for the well-known Checksfield insults about Wales and the Welsh, I suggest he deletes them from his repertoire. I don’t know exactly where he lives, but look forward to a springtime stroll around Birchington soon, and am not shy about talking to people if they look familiar. Which he does, thanks to several photos of him on this site.

  7. Didn’t see any mention of water and sewage provisions in their website write-up – given how Thanet is already stretched on this. Perhaps they could fund a new reservoir. Plus allotment space for food growing, as this is being taken from agricultural land and gardens are presumably very small. I hope they will use grey water recycling systems if they really want to be practically green, rather than green washing.

  8. I have always been in favour of house building we havent enough in the country. But I have to say enough is enough in thanet. Thanet lacks the infrastructure.

    Along the haine rd new houses both sides down the lord of the manor roundabout, even under the flight path which seems odd. Funny that the only place you cant build is jacky pallo old place !.

    But why build at the end of the runway ? Unless you know it’s never going to open. Which we all know is true.

    The amount of new houses going up in thanet is shocking, as others have said wheres the jobs, doctors, dentists, schools etc thanet is gridlocked with the school run already.

  9. Here we go again ,a developer stating ,primary school ,health care facilities ,shops etc,to get planning permission,for houses,as yet ,out of all the housing estates that promised all the above ,and none built ,will this one be different

    • I doubt that the school will be built as it is not financially viable. Were it to be built it would only replace the present Garlinge Junior and infants schools. This site would then be developed with flats and houses.

      Garlinge Junior school still has asbestos walls in the corridor and possibly classrooms.

  10. Fun fact – property developers are the biggest donators to the Conservative party (closely followed by wealthy Russians).

  11. Oh dear me. I could risk a good bet that the social housing 30% reducers to about 10% in time. Even those will be too expensive for most locals. More DFLs I guess. Perhaps building on Mansion is a bit more sensible but never mind the supporters of it don’t give a fig if all of Thanet is built over first. Infrastructure here is awful and always will be if building continues. Government , either local or national, doesn’t care a jot. Follow the money.

  12. The developer is out of date – the idea now is to have LOCALLY LED PLANS based on SUSTAINABILITY – see latest Housing Minister’s advice to the Levelling Up Committee last month. She also emphasised the importance of prime agricultural land for food security. In the emantime how about addressing ‘brownfield’, ‘long term empties’ and ‘AirBnB’ – this employment of idle resource will satisfy population demands for at least the enext decade. Oh – and there is no chance of desalination plants in Pegwell or Minnis Bays this side of 2050 – and no prospect of a reservoir either. You’d have to be pretty credulous to believe all the ‘add on’ amenities – we can’t find enough GPs as it is.Fortunately TDC has now joined the 60+ other councils who have either ditched or at least paused their Local Plans in search of something more sensible than top down imposition – and the national strategy is now to ‘densify’ the 20 or so leading cities (it helps ‘decarbonisation’. Thanet City does not feature.

  13. The trouble with mitigating for the existing wildlife will see it disappear when all this work would start by destroying the habitat they are using at present. The wildlife mentioned will not come back when it’s all finished when humans are living on it and driving through it, it will be gone for good. This would be a crying shame and a wildlife crime to disturb protected species already in existence like the report says.

    Leave the land alone for goodness sake. The greed of these developers with TDC complicit/compliant will just cause more disturbance and traffic jams in an already over-developed area. We do not have the road system to cope with even more of this. The infrastructure is also under huge strain already. Where will all the extra water come from? and where will the waste water go?, not into the ground and our limited water table I hope, and not into the sewers that cannot cope at present whenever it rains! We are already suffering ourselves with not being able to get health appointments or treatment because there are not enough GP surgeries here for us and few hospitals for the population never mind thousands of extra people moving in.

    Also, the section that states they will provide ‘UP TO’ 30% affordable housing is a get out clause once again. You either provide 30% which is the standard amount needed or you don’t. Up to 30% could be anything, 1% would still be classed as up to 30%. You get this scam in the shop sales when they say up to 50% off and only one item is 50% off, the rest are 10%. TDC need to get the 30% fixed in a contract they will supply up front and not allow them to come back after consent is given to change it to a lower amount, like the developers know they can do here in Thanet with our weak willed planning office. And the provision of schools, doctors and nice green spaces is just a rouse as it never happens. The excuses will follow the given planning consents.

    Anyway after saying all this I don’t believe Thanet needs another huge housing development on it for people to move here. If it was homes being built for those Thanet residents who are without their own home because of the state of rented accommodation supply being poor then that would be a more welcome proposal, but we all know it won’t so people will still be left homeless while others get rich.
    What happened to levelling up this Government said it wanted? A certain section of society always gets left behind while the rich get richer.

  14. Who voted this council in? Lazy people who moan later BUT it’s too late. “YOU GET WHAT YOU SOW” I’d suggest you vote for REFORM UK 🇬🇧 PARTY in the next Election.

    • Reform is just a re-badged UKIP.
      And look what a UKIP council got us: a Local Plan that allowed the building of houses on greenfields all over Thanet: Cliffsend, the Villages, Birchington. Meanwhile, a huge great chunk of brownfield still stands empty, idle, deolate after almost 10 years.

    • The answer is “Don’t vote Tory at the General Election”
      It was they who git rid of 22,000 police officers; imposed such rubbish contracts on dentists that most no longer provide NHS services; restructured and under funded GP surgeries to the point where they’re on the verge of collapse.

  15. St John’s College Cambridge ..please provide hospital and GP services for all these extra people moving into your rabbit hutch size houses. Put your hand into your over sized wallet and cough up the millions that will be needed for medical services for the extra thousands of people you intend to move into Thanet. Providing land for a primary school does not help this area. It needs medical, dental and GP services

    • Hi Chris exactly what I was thinking about writing. I also think that the St John’s college are going to systematically either build on the whole of their owned land in thanet just think they got the land in the days of buying it for peppercorns now its worth millions, as I have been saying since the planning was agreed for westwood Cross centre all our arable land will end up with housing, the only way this is going to stop is if the government stops it councils have not the money to fight it if the council says noway no more housing the builders take them to court etc the only chance now to stop it is we get together like Westgate are doing and we petition the Prime Minister, we all know that house building is a good sign as it will give a kick start to the economy, but all the arable land disappearing means less food stuff grown in our country means we have to import more this means foods will continue to rise in price yes I know more imports will mean more merit for a cargo hub at Manston, we have not anywhere near the infrastructure needed or even in the planning for the housing and or the likely hood of the cargo hub, work yes plenty of it building everything but we don’t have that amount of brickies etc in the area they are talking about needing most of them are on the books of the builders and they have a list of workers who are called on when they have the work, definitely won’t be jobs for those who decide to buy the houses unless they are doctors nurses police teachers and taxi drivers plus maybe some if the cargo hub gets the go ahead.

    • Thatcher launched the “Right to Buy” scheme decades ago. Under this scheme, council tenants could buy their council houses at a knockdown price. But Thatcher’s scheme also forbid councils from using monies so raised to be spent on new council house building.
      So, a double whammy.
      The councils have no money. And if they had, the tenants living in any council houses built would be able to buy them at knockdown prices.
      So there’s very little chance of local authorities building the much needed affordable rented property.

      • Andrew the amount of money wasted paying dodgy managers off from TDC would certainly build a few houses

  16. The council is building some housing. But not much. As Andrew says, they haven’t the money.

  17. So I will point out this out, 2 of these large properties developments had schools in them and one had a doctors surgery in the plans. Neither have built a school or a surgery. So the promise of a school in this one will not happen.

  18. Only 1 council I know of have actually taken redrow to the high Court. To get the promises full field. That a bridge would be built in Lymington. The estate has been finished for 12 years and redrow thought they wouldn’t have to build there million pound bridge.

  19. This won’t stop as all this arable land owned by Cambridge will get built on.
    Cambridge University doesn’t care about Thanet. Thanet will become concreted over, arable land gone, there will be a lot less Grade 1 land for growing our own food, and we will still import nigh on half a million people a year.
    It will never end.
    As long as there is a short term profit for the University though, eh?

  20. I am against so many houses and against building on agricultural land and countryside. I have written to Michael Gove, Mick Everitt, Colin Carmichael and anyone else remotely connected – St Johns is a waste of time, no social consceience, doesn’t care.
    As well as / instead of ranting on here I suggest you all write to Gove, Gale/McKinley, Everitt, Carmichael, your local councillors and the PM if you want to make a difference – if enough people push back the politicians will have to listen….there will be a general election next year.

  21. THANET CPRE has responded to the proposed North Thanet Link Road scheme and this present case is encapsulated within the wider concerns. KCC Highways are out of date in their non-locally led thinking : essentially we have yet to have a Water Plan which can cope with the present population and there should be enough long term empties (providing work for local tradesmen and early ‘recycling’ with a rethink of Westwood Cross ‘brownfield’ opportunities (joined up with a rigorous rationing of AirBnB) to provide for existing foreseeable actual needs – and any Strategic Roads application would be better aligned closely between Port Ramsgate/Sandwich Life Sciences/Dover. As it is, we were promised that the Local Plan revision is now ‘paused’ (in common with some 60 other local Authorities.) St John’s needs to reorientate itself towards ‘community’ rather than CEO bonuses for its agents and that cuts out ‘executive housing galore’. Thanet needs to promote Environmental Improvement and Biodiversity to the top of its Agenda
    and the CPRE will be working on that for a Local Plan Forum involving the community !

    • Geoff you are spot on with this I literally was enquiring with them as I am on there email list before the football and do your post has saved me a written it.

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