MP supports Rainham residents’ protest over controversial development

For the second time in two weeks, the community has come together to oppose plans to build 750 homes on a local orchard.  Daisy Page reports.

Transcript

00:00Save the orchards! Save the orchards!

00:04It is the second protest in just two weeks, as proposals might see 126 acres of agricultural land turned into a housing development.

00:14Four years ago Raynham residents fought to save their orchards, but here today they're in protest again against unwanted houses.

00:23Here you can see the land which has the proposed developments for 170 homes by Esquire,

00:29which includes schools, a community centre, a nursery and a care home.

00:33But residents have concerns over the impact of the proposed plans.

00:38I think it's the loss of this valued landscape, the loss of the productive orchards,

00:43the impact of the traffic and the mayhem that this level of development will cause,

00:48and those impacts on the heritage properties and the heritage areas.

00:52The site is the wrong site I think for that type of development.

00:56I recognise the new housing, I do really recognise that, but this is prime agricultural land,

01:01it's a productive orchard, orchards provide a really important and valuable habitat for a whole bunch of species.

01:09Generally the infrastructure is so poor, in my opinion, that we can't really afford, for the Medway towns generally, not just Raynham,

01:21to have a big population explosion.

01:24In support of the protest was Labour Party MP for Gillingham and Raynham.

01:28So I actually recognise that we have a housing crisis and it's something we really need to tackle,

01:32and I'm very supportive of Labour government's plans to bring forward new affordable housing,

01:36tackle the housing crisis, and particularly some of the challenges that we face around temporary accommodation

01:41and people living in sub-standard homes.

01:43I think having a roof over your head should be a right, and that's something I support.

01:47I do have concerns about this site, particularly the impact on the road infrastructure.

01:51It's a number of homes and the roads just aren't designed to cope,

01:54and I don't believe that the mitigations that have been put in place for this particular development suitably will address that issue.

02:01The proposals are a part of the Medway council's local plan, which has not yet been adopted,

02:07but the council has been operating without this planning framework for over two decades.

02:12This council, under the previous Conservative government, lost £170 million of infrastructure funding.

02:19Why is that important to this particular set of circumstances?

02:22Because that's meant that the housing number, which has decreased slightly under the new Labour government,

02:28we've had to share that across Medway more widely.

02:31So the number has gone down slightly in who, because the infrastructure has now not got the funding that it did have,

02:37and it's meant that other parts of Medway have perhaps taken slightly more than they would have done in previous iterations.

02:42But for now, the plans are just proposals, meaning they won't be submitted until after the adoption of the Medway council's local plan,

02:50which is expected to happen late next year.

02:53Daisy Page for KMTV.

02:54Daisy Page for KMTV.

02:55Daisy Page for KMTV!