Councillors at a planning meeting next week will discuss a reserved matters application for the first phase of a 214 home development on agricultural land in Minster.
Outline planning permission for the scheme was granted permission in September 2021 despite councillors’ concerns over traffic, school places, adequate medical facilities and the number of houses on the site.
The total application area is 34.67 acres, with proposed residential development and associated open space and services on approximately 32.27 acres and a reserve site of 2.40 acres proposed for the future extension to Minster Cemetery.
The land on the west side of Tothill Street, Minster, is owned by St. John’s College Cambridge and Spanton Farms Limited. The site is on a Special Protection Zone.
Savills has lodged the latest documents with Thanet council on behalf of Barratt David Wilson Homes for 133 dwellings, including details of layout, scale, landscaping and appearance. The first phase is the northern area of the site and covers 9.96Ha of land. It will be accessed via a new junction onto Tothill Street.
Councillors will now discuss the layout of development, its scale and appearance, and the landscaping for the first phase, for 133 homes. Updated plans now provide six 1-bed flats, two 2-bed flats, eighteen 2-bed houses, seventy-two 3-bed houses, and thirty-five 4-bed houses.
Each property will have two parking spaces and there will be an additional 40 visitor spaces plus one electric charging point per dwelling.
Some 49 letters of objection have been received and concerns have been raised by Minster Parish Council. Issues include a lack of response to comments raised by residents at the public consultation; potential impact from flooding; overlooking; traffic congestion; not enough smaller affordable units; lack of access to healthcare and schools; impact on wildlife and habitats and unsafe roads.
Minster Parish Council adds: “The Parish Council are pleased to see affordable units in the centre of the development, but consideration does not appear to have been given to the rural housing needs survey that was carried out.
“There are only two 1-bed ground floor flats in the application. Housing aimed at “downsizing” older residents are welcomed, particularly if this releases existing family social housing in the village;
“A local lettings plan needs to be agreed with the housing association who buy/take on the affordable housing to ensure that the houses are offered initially to those with a connection to Minster and then the surrounding villages.”
Monkton Parish Council also raises concerns including the lack of detail in the construction plan.
Kent County Council says: “We would expect the character of the Bridleway to be retained. On plans provided, the hedgerow on the Western / field side of TE29 appear not to be shown and we require confirmation that this would not be the case. The Bridleway must remain on existing alignment as previously advised.”
The bridleway connects the A299 to the north with Prospect Road to the south. The proposed site layout did not originally show the bridleway on the plans, or connections to the bridleway from within the site. Amended plans have been submitted showing the location.
A report to councillors says: “Concern has been raised by residents that this is an ancient bridleway and should be protected. Whilst it is appreciated that the ditch does offer some visual benefits, it is not usable as a bridleway in its current condition, and therefore the benefits of infilling and resurfacing the ditch so that it can be used by pedestrians, cyclists wishing to connect onto the existing cycle path along the A299, and horse riders, is in officers view considered to outweigh the visual harm resulting from the infilling of the ditch. Furthermore, these works have already been approved through the outline application.”
The applicant has made a further submission of plans that includes two options for the bridleway. Option A retains the existing location of the bridleway, but involves its widening to 3m and resurfacing, with pedestrian and cycle connections into the site. Option B does not involve any widening of the bridleway, so it could not be used by horses, but the plan submitted shows that the bridleway could still be connected into the site, with some excavation works to provide sloped paths to connect onto the bridleway with retaining walls.
KCC also notes a temporary reptile receptor site will be in a cemetery extension area and will be used for at least 2 years while the grassland habitat in the north of the site has established and can support reptiles.
KCC recommends a diversion for a footpath currently proposed so it avoids the Skylark and turtle dove mitigation area.
The application has been called to planning committee by Cllr Abi Smith, to allow members to consider the impact on highway safety, and the ratio of affordable housing and by Cllr Reece Pugh, to consider the impact on the living conditions of residents in Fairfield Road, and the changes to the path adjacent to Greenhill Gardens.
In 2021 councillors raised concerns that there would not be sufficient school places at Minster and the plan for new youngsters in the village to go to a proposed Manston Green primary school was inadequate with the risk that that school may not be built in time – or at all.
Councillors also raised concerns that traffic mitigations to add an extra lane at the Tothill roundabout and pay £166,000 for junction work at Spitfire Way were not adequate to cope with a possible 200-300 more vehicles trying to enter and exit the village.
Planning officers recommend members to approve the latest application.
The meeting takes place on June 14 from 7pm.
After being irritated by the public demonstrations from Eco Warrior groups, I think I now see why they are necessary. If the public use established ways to object; to raise concerns or even just to ask sensible questions, they are simply ignored. Issues of road congestion, adequacy of the sewage and clean water infrastructure and access to health and education are not minor issues, but are ignored as Nimbyism. This part of Kent is being massively overdeveloped with no thought for quality of life for the residents – both current and new arrivals.
I live in a 2 storey property that was built 90 years ago at the bottom of a slight hill. The property was built on infill spoil and was formally an orchard. At the bottom if the dip was a stream that was infilled, again infilled with spoil. The stream is still active underground as several properties have suffered from subsidence. The footings – built of brick – for my property are pyramid shaped and go down 3mtrs.
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Opposite my home is a newish – built within the last 20 years- single story school. The footings for this building go to a depth of 4mtrs. The playground has surface water issues.
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As I say the stream is still active. To fill in a ditch that is there for a reason is stupidity.
Thanet has one big problem and that is most of the land in Thanet is owned by other county’s so Thanet has no say, lot’s of land was sold and now there selling to offload housing numbers to Thanet area
You can talk all day long about houses . If the council says no the bod who lives hundreds of miles away will say yes . And another site starts. I’m glad I’m as old as I am as the future is very black for the younger kids being Bourne today.
Hmmmmmm.
The unthinkable.
Crowdfunding.
Maybe it’s time to look at the land banking entities around here. Contact them. Ask them how much they want for all their land, etc.
Then form a local Trust with the sole purpose of maintaining all the remaining land in Thanet as Grade A agricultural land at a reasonable rent.
Take The Land and The Power back!
kent the garden of england – thats a laugh nowadays
If our council say to any new build application to fight any objection they have to have a viable legal objection to the planing application and plenty of money and money we have no money, and legal objections to an application being turned down have been lost even if 50%plus of the houses to be built are on a Flood plane, everything is stacked in favour of builders, so much of the land of the is owend by St John’s College Cambridge and they have owned a lot of it for years as it was ( no pun intended ) Dirt Cheap and the rental money has been used for the students benefits ie- books etc, against the size of the land owners what chance has the council got it matters not which party is at the helm if they don’t have the funds they have no chance of fighting Westminster or the Courts
How refreshing to see that no-one has mentioned the “M” word!
Great, build houses on agricultural land. Not a problem, until you start to think about where the food will come from, and the cost of it. Not only for our generation but our children and their childrens.
Maybe we need to organise a protest outside St. John’s College Cambridge?
I had no idea until recently how much land in Thanet Dt Johns College owned. No matter how many times we may object to a planning application and succeed, they just put in another one. It’s easy for them, but hard for the locals to fight each time. I always felt top grade agricultural land was protected, but is it!!!
The click wont like that.
But TDC have just refused a similar application on Grade A agricultural land in Minster which has less than half the amount of homes than this development. So why wasn’t this larger development refused likewise for the same reasons?