Canterbury council backs huge development in AONB

Permission will lead to industrialisation of an area of Kent Downs countryside

CPRE Kent is extremely disappointed that Canterbury City Council took the decision last night (Tuesday, July 7) to permit the building of a huge winery at Highland Court Farm in the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Nature Beauty, south of the city.

Planning committee members appear to have been swayed by the prospect of jobs and profits only one week after the council voted unanimously to adopt a Biodiversity Emergency Declaration to sit alongside its 2019 Climate Emergency Declaration.

This permission will lead to devastating industrialisation of an area of countryside that has specially protected status and should be conserved at all costs. There are many, many other places where such a development on this scale could have taken place without causing devastating damage to our precious countryside.

Further, CPRE Kent is concerned that the full level of its concerns, along with those of the Kent Downs AONB unit, Natural England and Historic England, were not fully reflected in the report before the committee and that we were denied the opportunity to address the committee meeting.