The Case Against The New Town To Join Adisham and Aylesham

These 13 points highlight the problems of building a new town joining up Adisham and Aylesham.

1. CCC’s new town scheme will extinguish Adisham as a small, close, individual rural community with a 1,400-year recorded history, set in beautiful and historic countryside containing nationally important habitat, unexplored archaeological remains and where tranquil enjoyment of the countryside is open to all, residents and visitors alike.
2. Canterbury City Council is high-handed in proposing the so-called ‘Community Garden New Town’, disregarding the results of public consultation. Opinion in the Parish of Adisham is and has always been strongly and uniformly against this proposal. It is strongly opposed by our neighbours including Aylesham and Wingham.
3. This scheme was cooked up by a few councillors and officials, then bounced on all in this draft of the Canterbury Local Plan (LP). Legally, this part of the LP is ‘not fit for purpose’:  (a) inadequacies in public consultation (b) CCC’s failure to collaborate with Dover DC on huge impact that this new town and CCC’s large estate at Womenswold will have on the Dover district.
4. This scheme will destroy Adisham’s traditional wide-open downland landscape, our parish marking where North Downs rise.
5. The scheme will destroy much prime farmland, superbly productive, precisely when our country needs such land.
6. The road infrastructure is completely inadequate to the extra 3,200 houses that would be built in the new town especially when added to 420 houses (‘minimum’) that CCC plan in Womenswold and, in the Dover Plan, 640 at Aylesham (joining Aylesham and Snowdown). How is it that CCC thinks this scheme is sustainable when, on the other side of the B2046, Dover DC have cut their housing plans by 500 houses because that authority recognises the weakness of the traffic infrastructure?
7. CCC failed to do the basic homework on its proposal including buy-in by relevant landowners. Also, CCC’s earlier site assessment shows it thought some of the land unsuitable for development.
8. Despite CCC’s assertion, there is no evidence of need for a new standalone town and the benefits have yet to be shown by CCC.
9. The implications for new services (including GPs) have not been properly planned for. And who will pay for them? These facilities should be ready at the start of a new town, not when (as the plan suggests) many of the new houses have already been occupied. With two new schools proposed in the new town, what does CCC think will happen to Adisham’s much loved village school?
10. East Kent is already a water-stressed area. We understand that CCC have no scientific evidence to show that local water resources can bear this extra burden.
11. The plan for sewage disposal is pitifully inadequate. Sewage pollution of the Kent coast is a national scandal, as is the eutrophication downstream of wetlands, e.g. famous Stodmarsh.
12. Adisham has 12 nationally–registered ancient woodland (proven existence since 1,600CE at least); five of these are important SSSIs (Sites of Special Scientific Interest). If the scheme goes ahead, a conurbation from Snowdown will stretch to the edge of the SSSI woods (except a narrow cordon) and the character of the woods will inevitably change to one of ‘urban parkland’.
13. The scheme makes us the insulting offer of ‘country parks’. Adisham (and Womenswold) needs no country parks!