Ashford

Ashford

A large borough dominated by the former railway town of Ashford.
The landscape in the north of the borough is part of the Kent Downs National Landscape, which is at its most stunning at the Devil’s Kneading Trough, near Wye. From here you can see across the Upper Stour Valley and all the way to Dungeness and Fairlight Cliffs, near Hastings.
South-west of Ashford, the landscape is characterised by low rolling hills and secluded valleys of the eastern Weald, around Tenterden, which descends to the Reading Sewer, a branch of the River Rother that snakes around the Isle of Oxney on the edge of Romney Marsh.

Chairman
Christine Drury

The issues
Ashford was given ‘growth area’ status in central government’s 2003 Sustainable Communities Plan. As a growth area, it had very high housing targets but a compact strategy focusing development in and around the town of Ashford.
Like so many other districts, Ashford is under increasing pressure to accept less constrained development under the provisions of the 2012 NPPF.
The River Stour is under threat from over-pumping (abstraction) and declining water quality due to the increasing proportion of the river flow being treated wastewater.

Where we are now
The Local Plan was adopted in February 2019.
Regulation 18 consultation on a new Local Plan is expected to take place in April 2025.
A list of sites submitted in response to the borough council’s call for sites (2023) was published (for information purposes only) on April 2, 2024. No site assessments have been undertaken and no decisions have been made on any of the sites submitted.
Funding required to clear the 30,000 tonnes of illegally dumped landfill waste from Hoad’s Wood near Bethersden has been approved – for more information click here
The Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project proposed for the Stonestreet Green solar array at Aldington is at the pre-application stage.