Hot news on planning application

7 Jul 2017 by John Swannick

The Club’s application was finally considered by Maidstone Borough Council’s Planning Committee at its meeting last night. Regrettably, the planning officers were minded to recommend that the Committee turn the application down. Thanks to great contributions from the Club’s adviser, Richard Sonnex, and our Borough Councillors, Louise Brice and John Perry, we managed to effectively dismantle the main arguments in the officers’ report to Committee. So much so, that the lead planning officer chose to present a quite different verbal report – with different emphases and some new ‘facts’ – from that which was published only last week after a year’s consideration!

The meeting ended in confusion when the planning officer recommended that the decision be deferred to a future meeting as it became quite clear they had ‘mislaid’ and not included consideration in their report of the viability statement submitted by the Club to the Council in April and which formed a central part of our compelling case. The recording of the meeting webcast will be posted on the Building Our Future Facebook page as soon as it is available online so you can make your own judgements on the arguments at the end of what was a very hot (in more ways than one) and sticky five-hour meeting!!

We await a date for the next meeting, which could be very soon, and we will let you know how you can support.

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