Public consultation - make your voice count

Public consultation on Local Plan review – 1-22 December 2020

As you will know by now, the Council has included its proposed Garden Community (Heathlands) in its Local Plan review. This is a document produced by councils across the country which guides new development over the coming years. It sets out how much development is needed, where it should be built and what supporting infrastructure such as roads, schools and health centres should be provided.

The public consultation on the Local Plan review starts on 1 December and finishes at 5pm on 22 December. This is about the Council’s preferred spatial strategy. This means the Council will be asking for residents’ views on the proposed approach to future development and whether it should be built close to existing towns or in more rural areas across the borough.

This is a critical time, and we need every resident to write to the Council in response to the public consultation and let them know that this proposal is not right for this area.

Maidstone Borough Council’s Garden Community proposal fails to meet all the national planning policy requirements and will come under intense scrutiny by the Planning Inspector. We need to demonstrate that this proposal is not acceptable to the local community.

Make your voice count. This is not a done deal. By standing together as one united rural community we can defeat this proposal.

Here we have put together a guide to help you when drafting your letter/email to the Council.

General tips

Write to the council and in your own words tell them what you really dislike about this proposed scheme
Your letter only needs to be one side of A4
List your points clearly – you might want to focus on the key planning objections. Try not to make it too personal, we know that’s difficult, but the council wants to hear strong reasoned arguments about what you think is wrong with the proposal
Make sure your neighbours, friends, family and relatives know about this public consultation and encourage them to write to the council.
We have put together some key topic areas that you might want to include when writing your letter. Click here

We need as many people as possible to write to the council with their objections, to demonstrate the weight of public opinion against this scheme.

Background reading

Before writing your letter, you might want to do a little research about the proposal.

You can read the Council’s second masterplan for Heathlands here
SOHL’s summary document ‘Unsustainable, undeliverable and unviable’ explains why Lenham Heath is not the right location for a garden community
The Preferred Approaches document and Sustainability Appraisal, along with the Local Plan Review evidence base and other information can be viewed and downloaded from the council’s website https://localplan.maidstone.gov.uk/home/local-plan-review

Letter template

Download a template letter that you can adapt for your response to the Council’s Regulation 18b public consultation.

Where to send your response to the public consultation

Send in your response using the consultation portal https://maidstone-consult.objective.co.uk/portal/
Alternatively, you can complete the response form (https://localplan.maidstone.gov.uk/home/local-plan-review) and forward it to the Council.
You can email it to ldf@maidstone.gov.uk
Or post to Strategic Planning, Maidstone Borough Council, Maidstone House, King Street, Maidstone, ME15 6JQ

Please send a copy of your response to saveourheathlands@gmail.com

This is so we can submit them as part of our evidence to the Planning Inspector.

Public consultation – make your voice count

Background reading