The destruction of Canterbury’s countryside: it doesn’t have to be this way

We call on the city council to allow the Local Plan to be produced in line with revised policy and drop its ‘frankly outrageous plan to more than double current levels of housebuilding’

With consultation on the Canterbury City Council Local Plan having just closed, it is fair to say CPRE Kent has been extremely critical in its response.

This is hardly surprising given the council’s frankly outrageous plan to more than double current levels of housebuilding, almost entirely on undeveloped greenfield sites.

Further, it is in part seeking to justify this growth on the basis that it is needed to fund new roads, which we consider to be unnecessary and environmentally damaging.

As we point out in our response, such justification is nonsense given that the level of additional housebuilding required to fund the roadbuilding will just further aggravate existing infrastructure problems rather than resolve them.

However, central to our response is that imminent changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) mean Canterbury City Council simply doesn’t have to do this.

Specifically, the revised NPPF currently being consulted upon would give the council significantly more scope to plan for realistic and sustainable locally-set housing targets instead of the unjustifiable nationally-set targets the current draft Plan is looking to meet.

That is, it will no longer be sufficient for Canterbury City Council to say its hands are being tied by central government housing targets. To go forward with the clearly unsustainable housing-growth strategy within the draft Plan and the continued destruction of the district’s countryside will be entirely on the council itself.

This is why we have called on the council to amend the current Plan-making timescale to allow for the Canterbury Local Plan to be produced in line with the soon-to-be updated NPPF. We believe this is the minimum it should do.

If you care about Canterbury’s countryside, you should make this call too.

• Our full comments can be found here
• To read more about Canterbury planning, click here and here

Friday, January 20, 2023