21/03/2026
The Conservatives on Canterbury City Council voted against the Lab/Lib Dem's draft Local Plan in its current form going to the Section 19 stage (consultation by a planning inspector to judge the plan’s legality and soundness) because:
1/ the plan is unsustainable and unsound - it seems the process of deciding where to place 23,000 new homes has become simply anywhere that’s politically expedient for the Labour and Lib Dem cabinet, resulting in a reliance on technically complicated sites and insufficient highways infrastructure.
There is a risk of challenge and as a result all the infrastructure we hoped for like coastal secondary schools, lower density housing estates, more affordable housing, more open space and greater protection for our precious landscapes, biodiversity and nature could now be at risk of removal or being watered down. There is also great concern that the weakness of this Local Plan may result in the planning inspector putting the University of Kent land and other sites back into the plan.
2/ The transport plan is speculative and untested It relies on a bus first strategy without having any buses or any plan for a new bus station in Canterbury.
It aims to grid lock Canterbury by taking out one lane of the ring road, spending £18m of taxpayers' money to expand the Wincheap Park & Ride, while closing and disposing of most city centre car parks.
It’s a plan that is against the car driver and particularly against lower paid workers needing to get into the centre of Canterbury. It's unclear how residents in the NE of the district will drive by car to the hospital.
In what is called “vision and validate”, this scheme is nonsensical as it does not address how the council makes up the significant loss in parking revenue as a result of closing car parks. Moreover, if the “vision” fails to address reducing congestion in Canterbury, then strategies like imposing a charge on cars coming into the city could be adopted during the next decade.
3/ After the recent Scrutiny Committee we are concerned that both Southeast Water and Southern Water don't have the capacity to provide drinking water and sewerage respectively for new housing developments. It's all very well saying legally they have to provide connections, but we do not believe that the resulting restriction on daily water consumption or greater reliance on sewage tankering are the right answers.
This draft Local Plan is infrastructure light.
4/ While the Lab/Lib Dem administration says it has listened to residents, we don't think it has. It's listened to some where it suits them. The proposed Beacon Road development being a case in point. There's been no listening. They haven't challenged the housing numbers, which aren't based on current population growth trends in the district.
5/ The Lab/Lib Dem administration claims this is a great Local Plan for rural areas. Who have they asked? It's certainly not the view of parishes surrounding Herne Bay who are having yet more unwanted housing forced on them, but without the much-needed investment in highways infrastructure on Island Road or in Hoath, Greenhill and Herne & Broomfield.
