Swale: a case study in why Local Plans must be kept up to date

Swale Borough Council’s approval of a hybrid planning application to build 2,500 properties on Duchy of Cornwall land near Faversham on Tuesday (March 10) disappointed many but perhaps came as no great surprise, while news that an application to develop yet another 2,500 near Bobbing (the so-called Foxchurch scheme) has been recommended for approval by council officers rubbed more salt in the wounds of anyone who loves the area’s countryside.

Sadly, the ruination of so much greenfield land might be seen as almost inevitable given the action (or inaction) of the borough council.

Our planners here at CPRE Kent did their bit in commenting on the Regulation 18 consultation for the draft Swale Local Plan. You can read what we said here.

But to be honest, we’re not happy.

The council has delayed and delayed progress on its draft Local Plan. It was supposed to have been reviewed within five years of the adoption of the current Plan in 2017.

Those five years have come and gone.

These delays have been put down to changes made by government to the National Planning Policy Framework and the introduction of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act.

More recently, the council decided to put consultation on a Local Plan strategy (and allocations) on hold, pending the outcome of the called-in planning applications for 8,400 homes at Highsted Park outside Sittingbourne.

Time and again we wrote to councillors explaining the risk they placed themselves in by putting the council in Local Plan limbo.

Without an up-to-date Local Plan (and without the required five-year housing land supply), the council has placed itself at the mercy of developers who have been submitting planning applications on unallocated sites.

Over the years the council has refused planning applications for speculative residential development. However, these decisions have then been overturned by the Planning Inspectorate on appeal. The council has allowed itself to be ‘held hostage’ to third parties operating in a policy vacuum.

Nine years later, it would be a reasonable expectation that a draft Local Plan would come forward with a spatial strategy, site allocations and development management (decision-making) polices going hand-in-hand and being consulted on at the same time.

This has not been the case.

In the words of Nigel Kay, our Swale group chairman: “We are left being further confused as to why a spatial strategy wasn’t included in the recent Regulation 18 consultation, especially when midway through the consultation period, draft allocations and options for spatial strategy were reported to (and agreed) by the council’s planning & transportation policy working group on January 22, 2026.”

It is expected that the next round of public consultation on the Local Plan will take place over the summer.