Concerns: transport - road and rail

There are three things about this housing project that personally concern me:

1. First is that we require a new train station at Hillborough now, let alone when there are another 1,300 families in the immediate area.
2. Closer to home is that Bishopstone Lane is already dangerous with the existing traffic and they have nothing in place to improve the situation. Bearing in mind with 1300 houses comes at least another couple of hundred dogs that will want to be walked/driven along Bishopstone Lane to Reculver Country Park.
3. The road between Hillborough and Sturry is a busy dangerous country road and nothing is planned to improve it, not even a roundabout at the other end.

RM, Bishopstone, 21st Nov 2011

Support from CPRE Protect Kent

Very recently, a developer has launched a public exhibition of its plans to build an enormous residential estate, with business units also, space for a school, and local shops, etc. on farmland which is currently being worked, and which the Council has included for possible housing in its draft Core Strategy Housing Allocation Assessment.

Effectively this would add a very large suburb to Herne Bay right up to the Northern side of the new Thanet Way. We are currently seeking views from local people, with the aim of presenting a summary of views to the Council if and when a planning application is filed.

The developers speak of an application next January, but the second draft of the Core Strategy is not expected before the Spring, so we are wondering why the hurry. Level 5 sustainable development code looming perhaps? Or concerns about the Localism Bill, or perhaps the "silence of the plans"?

Barrie Gore

Canterbury District Committee

CPRE Protect Kent Newsletter Autumn 2011

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Don't shoot the messenger!

Easy to attack messenger over meeting over housing

I would like to respond to the letter in last week's paper about the public meeting at Beltinge village hall on Kitewood's plans for housing development (Letters, Herne Bay Gazette, October 27).

I too am a resident of Beltinge, but unlike the letter writer, I chose to organise a meeting to bring residents together to express their concerns. I put an agenda before the meeting which was accepted.

You will always will have some individuals who seek to attack the messenger rather than the message. I would have thought that this individual would have better spent his energy on pointing out the pitfalls of the project.

As I had paid for the hire of the hall, printing some 50 eight-page documents, and distributed some 250 meeting notices, my budget could not run to a sound system, nor a state of the art communication system.

It is obvious that this individual does not read local newspapers or follow local issues in the Beltinge area where I have been active on many issues.

Michael Britten, Osborne Gardens, Beltinge

HB Gazette 3rd Nov 2011 Letters

Too much traffic...

The developers propose to improve access to the A299. Increased traffic from this proposed new town may turn left instead of turning right, and there we have Reculver Road. Pity the people who live near the junction by the school. Reculver Road is quite busy as it is. The increase in vehicles, (some families can have 3 cars; my neighbour has 4) will make local roads intolerable. I can envisage single and some double yellow lines along the length of the road.

I feel this developement is totally out of proportion for this area and farmland will be lost. Housing should be built closer to large towns to facilitate employment and reduce travel. I am therefore anti. I vote NO

Mick, 6th Nov 2011

I'm all for it

Got one of your leaflets on public meeting at Kings hall. First of all I do not agree its unwanted development, what about the shortage of housing and jobs in England? Its not as if this space is the only green space around.

If you put Hillborough in the midle of a six mile radius left and right (road atlas britain) you have hardly nothing to the right accept Reculver untill Minnis bay, accept sea views and green fields. Sweeping inwards through to Sarre, Upstreet, Grove you have marshes and open countryside. Westbere you have lakes and rivers then on to Broadoak and Tylerhill more countryside and woods, then Cloweswood, Thorndenwood, Bleanwood, which is about THREE times the size of Herne bay. Then back to the coast Swalecliffe on the left of Hillborough and more open space and sea.

How do I feel "fantastic" hope it gets the go ahead. 1000s of jobs, Good for the economy, more homes Britain needs badly. The only people that are against this are people like you who live close to this area and don't want anyone else to enjoy all it has to offer. Stop thinking of yourselves and think of britain and the tens of 1000s that have to rent or cannot get on the property ladder. I grew up in Kent and know this area very well indeed, we have room for 1000 or so houses. The government want it, our future children want it, the unemployed want it.

Hillborough and its six mile radius is about 25% houses once built, of the houses being 20 small villages as above. 75% green or open space or woods. Herne Bay as a whole being only 10-12% housing in my six mile radius. Look at the bigger picture, look on a map, we have the room. These are my views, my concerns are, hope they put in a petrol station in on the build.

It could be worse, imagine if it were to be a council estate???

TR 5th Nov 2011