Is Kent being covered in concrete? Saving Arcadia is a series in two parts. The first part will look at the problems of managing development and planning in Kent, and the second will endeavour to offer answers and solutions.
Kent is a county of contrasts: it is surrounded on three sides by water but has two distinct coastlines north and south. The former can be characterised as estuarial as it aligns the Thames estuary along its south bank, consisting mainly of wild marshland and post-industrial development. The southern coast consists of towering chalk cliffs, sand and pebble beaches, Romney Marsh, and a large shingle peninsula at Dungeness. Inland there is downland to the east and the west ends of the county, with the sylvan landscape of the Weald separating both downlands.
Modern urbanisation is threatening rural areas in Kent
Not all of Kent is scenic countryside. For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, North Kent was heavily populated and interspersed with industry. East Kent in contrast was a favoured retirement area for Londoners, a holiday/tourism zone, and a location for light industry.
For those lucky individuals living in the less developed areas of Kent, their areas may well be seen as an Arcadia. Quiet and free from the constructions of industrial Britain. 27% of the population of Kent live in rural areas, and they have been the bedrock of the status quo, in the administration of Kent. In the last 25 years, however, Arcadia has been under threat, or at least those living within it feel that it is under threat.
The High Speed One rail line drove clean through the middle of Kent but access to it as a cross-channel route is now limited for local residents, as Euro Star refuses to allow its trains to stop at Ashford or Ebbsfleet, even though these were key features when the line was built.
Housing developments in Ashford, Faversham, Lenham, Tenterden and Maidstone, are impinging on Arcadia. The proposed redesignation of parts of the green belt as ‘grey belt’ and therefore open to development, has disturbed Arcadia still further.
Connectivity – a blessing and a curse
Kent’s population, now 1.6 million in Kent County Council plus around 280,000 in Medway, has grown steadily compared to other parts of the UK, which have waxed and waned in population over the 20th century especially London.
Kent has a similar size of population to Northern Ireland, but is governed by a patchwork quilt of ill-fitting, old fashioned, unitary, county and district councils. Kent’s northern extremity is metropolitan in character but elsewhere it is a mixture of small and medium-sized market towns, coastal communities, and rural settlements. Kent is connected north and south by two motorways and a dense network of mainline railways.
This connectivity is both a boon and curse. Whilst it is beneficial that the connection to the capital is comprehensive, though not especially swift, the connectivity itself is a curse because of the nature of Kent being only 22 miles from continental Europe. This means that Kent is not only used as a gateway to Europe but it is also favoured as a retirement and holiday area, because of its mild and sunny climate and its close proximity to London, thus creating a tension between development and conservation.
Many of the coastal communities in Kent were never trading settlements as such but grew as retirement and holiday areas in the 19th and 20th centuries. Birchington, Westgate and Margate are examples of this expansion. Ramsgate was both a trading settlement with a port, strategic railway junction, and road system but it was also a holiday destination with notable hotels.
Kent’s proximity to the capital has been both a source of wealth, and of a defensiveness. The Arcadians believe green belt is their moat, their bulwark, against urban sprawl. The House of Commons library refers to this in its research-briefings. The Arcadian nightmare is Kent becoming a subtopia.
Political approaches towards the green belt
The alternative view from ‘free market’ thinktanks and the house building industry is that the green belt harms the economy of Kent and the UK as a whole; its retention means the housing crisis will continue because not enough houses will be built.
Politicians are split. Everyone knows that the housing market is dysfunctional, damaging the aspirations of potential homeowners and reducing growth and innovation because so much money is poured into the housing market in the belief that bricks and mortar will provide a solid return on investment. Rents are sky-high and the rate of homelessness is growing. The cost-of-housing-homeless-people is causing councils to go bust. Not enough houses are being built, and the quality and condition of the housing stock is poor. Britain is the draughty house capital of Europe. Poor housing also affects the NHS because it is a cause of illness.
Knowing all this, you would expect politicians to act: build more houses etc. However, the ‘not in my backyard’ (NIMBY) cohort is well funded, well-led, vocal, opinionated, and they vote. This means the political parties favoured by the Arcadians: the Conservatives, LibDems, Greens and Reform to some extent, are hung on a hook of their own making. Conserving green rurality is a key part of what they stand for. These are the parties of land and preservation.
Government action looking forward
Labour’s traditions are industrial and urban, so it will be interesting to see how their dash for housing growth works out. The incoming Labour government has tried to finesse the arguments about the green belt by stating that some of the green belt ought to be redesignated as grey belt, where planning authorities “identify land with high sustainable development potential”. Labour has said this meant sites such as redundant filling stations, quarries, or derelict land. In other words, brownfield sites within an oasis of green belt.
Simply defining land as grey belt land, ignores the hard cases such as Betteshanger park. This is a former colliery site, typical brownfield land, which was re-terrained at great public expense, and then after a controversial change of ownership from public to private, it was given a planning consent for a surf/wave pool and hotel. However, the land is rich in nature, because of its colony of lizard orchids and turtle doves.
After 40 years of deindustrialisation, nature has moved in and therefore the demarcation between green belt, grey belt and brownfield land may not be as clear as first thought. The government has tried to clarify the grey belt via its new national planning policy framework, which is a clear example of hope over experience.
Arguments in favour of green belt policy
Before we can endeavour to propose some resolutions on the issue of planning and development in Kent, we should gauge the arguments for and against the green belt and its effects on the physical, social and political infrastructure of Kent. The arguments for Arcadia and the green belt are:
- The term was coined by Octavia Hill (a founder of the National trust in 1875), as a defence against what she believed was unrelenting urbanisation. The fundamental aim of green belt policy is to prevent urban sprawl by keeping land permanently green and consequently the most important attribute of green belts is their openness.
- The Metropolitan green belt around London was first proposed by the Greater London Regional Planning Committee in 1935. The Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 then allowed local authorities to include green belt proposals in their development plans.
When researching planning applications inside or outside the green belt, these arguments for the policy are often raised by objectors:
- Overdevelopment and the ‘swamping’ of existing communities with large amounts of ‘identikit’ housing.
- Wrong sort of housing: Objectors concerned not to be termed NIMbies often say they are in favour of ‘some development’, just not the amount and type of housing proposed.
- Nature: rare flora and fauna are often offered as a reason against development, in green belt land or greenfield sites.
- Traffic: objections often suggest that the existing highway infrastructure is inadequate.
- Food production: The loss of farmland is portrayed both as a loss of a scenic amenity and as a danger to the nation because of the loss of land used for food production.
- Concreting over the land: under this argument, Octavia Hill’s green belt argument is restated.
Arguments against green belt policy
Ranged against this argument are:
- The housing crisis: There are not enough houses being built.
- According to developers, the planning system is slow, dysfunctional, and not delivering enough planning consents. The existence of the green belt only makes this worse as 20% of land in Kent has green belt designation. If we also include land within the Downs and High Weald classified nationally as areas of outstanding natural beauty and so protected from development, Arcadia takes up not far short of 50% of all available land in Kent. The remaining land therefore has to contain past, present and future development. There is a view that this is not tenable.
- The cost of housing has increased to a point where affordability is now an issue in many districts, which means the dream of home ownership is fading for future generations. There is a growing generational divide between existing homeowners and aspiring homeowners. Land costs have risen from 25% of the total cost of a house to 70% of the cost of a house in the last 30/40 years.
- Green belt conjures up an image of rolling hills, verdant forests, and farmland. The reality may be different and a reset is necessary. This appears to be the essence of the grey belt proposal from the government.
The lines of debate are illustrated above. It may be that this article simplifies the arguments for and against an Arcadian Kent, but we have to start somewhere. The next article in this series will look at whether we should compromise on our retention of Arcadia and what changes we might make without unduly compromising the concept of Arcadia, the Garden of England or other romantic concepts of rural Kent.
