By John Irwin & Harold Goodwin, Faversham's Future
The Faversham Neighbourhood Plan aims to protect and enhance the Town of Faversham in
identified key areas these include:
Promoting the viability and vitality of the town centre, as a resource for local people and visitors.
Supporting sustainable housing growth to meet the diverse needs of the local community.
Protecting Faversham’s green spaces and natural environments and ensuring environmental quality.
The Faversham Neighbourhood Plan goes to a referendum on Thursday, November 21st, and all registered voters in the town have a vote. A YES vote is essential to enable our town to continue to meet local needs whilst maintaining its character for our children and their children. Faversham is a special place, and we need to ensure that it remains special, prospers, and meets the needs of our community, now and in the future.
THERE IS NO PLAN B
Back in 2019, we, a group of concerned citizens in the Faversham Future Forum, pressed the
Town Council to start creating a Neighbourhood Plan so that, as a town, we would have more control over our development. Once passed at referendum, the Faversham Plan will form part of the local Development Plan (alongside the Swale Plan) and Swale Planners must consider the policies and the site allocations we have made for Faversham when determining planning applications. The Neighbourhood Plan policies carry legal weight. One of the reasons given by Swale for rejecting the application to build 250 homes on fields at Ham Road was the site’s rejection by the emerging Neighbourhood Plan.
It has taken five years and hours of work by volunteers and councillors working with support from a professional planner to develop the plan we now have. This is a community plan. Community input from public exhibitions, five sets of consultations, and a national record number of formal consultation responses were considered when developing the plan. Many of the comments, ideas and preference expressed by the community were included in plan; the result, a Faversham Plan developed by the people of Faversham, for the people of Faversham.
The referendum cannot be treated as a safe opportunity for a "protest vote"
As a community we have fought off major housing development on Abbeyfields and Ham Road; these sites are fully protected from development by the Neighbourhood Plan. If there is a no-vote, there will be a deluge of unwanted speculative development across Faversham as the Swale Plan is no longer fit for purpose and we will be without any local development plan. Having a Neighbourhood Plan in place protects Faversham against the presumption in favour of such speculative development.
The Faversham Plan can no longer be amended. It is this version of the Plan or no Faversham Plan.
No plan will leave us very vulnerable to speculative and unwanted planning applications from land agents and developers driven by their own commercial interests, not the interests of Faversham and its people.
The Faversham Plan has to align with the National Planning Policy Framework and the Swale Local Plan
The Neighbourhood Plan cannot address all of Faversham's needs.
It is impossible to secure more health service provision, improve transport, fix the roads, or solve our infrastructure problems through the planning system. All of these are of critical importance and the Faversham's Future will work to address these issues. We have pushed to include as much as legally possible in the Faversham Plan. For example, critical junctions are generally not identified in neighbourhood plans; we persuaded the planning inspector to include them. Roads and traffic management are highway issues, which are a KCC responsibility. The NPPF limits our ability to demand higher standards on air quality and renewable energy. The Faversham Plan strongly supports mobility and sustainable transport (FAV 4)* and public rights of way, national trails, pedestrian routes and cycleways Its not perfect but it’s as good as it gets.
PROTECTING MORE GREEN SPACES
Our town is blessed with numerous green spaces punctuating our urban landscape. Eighteen of these spaces ranging from our Town allotments, playing fields and parks to green spaces along the Front and Upper Brents are already protected as Local Green Spaces by Swale Borough Council. The Neighbourhood Plan will designate eight new Local Green Spaces, protecting them from the threat of future residential development. These include the extensive playing fields at the Windermere Estate and Lower Road as well as Woodlands at Wildish Road , Crab Island alongside the Creek, the fields from Upper Brents towards Faversham Creek and the land adjacent to New Creek Road.
Importantly the Neighbourhood Plan will protect the numerous cherished amenity spaces that
exist within our current housing developments. These are modest areas of grass and trees that contribute to our quality of life and wellbeing. One such small 'site' was recently put up for sale, a small green space with a beautiful willow tree adjacent to Beech Close. Such spaces will be protected through the Faversham Plan.
These are two of the eight new Local Green Spaces proposed in the new Neighbourhood Plan:
HOUSING ONLY ON BROWNFIELD SITES
As a planning document the Neighbourhood Plan will allocate land for 219 dwellings. 100% of these new builds will be on existing brownfield sites, an unambiguous preference for those who responded to the extensive consultations. The majority of these homes will be one-
and two-bedroom flats (incorporated in mixed-use developments), two to three homes for young families and accommodation suitable for older people and those with limited mobility. It is obvious of course, that 219 dwellings over the next 15 years will be insufficient to support the housing numbers demanded by central government. The plan does, however, give us some control over where new houses will go within the existing Parish boundary. Importantly, the Neighbourhood Plan has been able to demand that 66% of all new affordable housing should be for affordable rent and express clear support and preference for affordable housing provision that remains available in perpetuity (ie not sold off through 'right to buy') to meet ongoing local need.
HERITAGE AND THE FUTURE
The Faversham Plan seeks to encourage well-designed, sustainable, and locally distinctive development.
The plan lists eleven requirements for new builds to enhance the character of the town and take account of the “Faversham Design Guidance and Codes” developed by AECOM* and published as part of the Neighbourhood Plan Process in May 2021. The Faversham Plan calls for green infrastructure, including street and garden trees, and traditional hedges to mark boundaries.
The plan calls for heritage-led regeneration with the reuse and adaptation of existing buildings and encourages opportunities to realise the cultural and economic potential of heritage associated with our maritime history, agriculture, brick-making, gunpowder, brewing, wars and the twentieth. The Faversham Plan enables us to conserve, repurpose and reuse our heritage buildings to ensure they are fit for the future.
*AECOM were the infrastructure consultants employed to help in the neighbourhood plan creation.
FAVERSHAM CREEK
Faversham developed around the creek. It was at the heart of our town for centuries and brought a prosperity we can still observe in the architecture on Abbey Street. Sadly, in the 1980s we turned out back on the creek, lost the commercial port, and the creek silted up. So far, the town has been unsuccessful in gaining a swing bridge and making it navigable again for barges.
The new Faversham Plan seeks to "promote regeneration of brownfield and heritage sites" around the creek and to realise their economic, community and environmental potential. The Creek features heavily in the plan with both a dedicated set of Creekside Policies as well as designating a new Maritime Gateway Heritage Regeneration Area. The policies are wide-ranging but include securing a commitment from developers to provide and maintain and improve public access to the waterfront linking to the Public Rights of Way network and to the new King Charles III England Coast Path. All Creekside land allocated for development must be mixed use in nature, with policy encouraging business, hospitality, leisure, assembly, recreation, tourism and community uses. Residential use is restricted to upper floors and only where it is part of such mixed- use development. Furthermore, development will only be supported where it retains existing slipways and buildings and features that contribute to the special architectural or historic character of the Creekside.
At local government re- organisation in 1974, the ownership of Town Quay, TS Hazard and the 1911 Pump House ownership passed to Swale. The Town Council is close to re-securing ownership and recognising this; the new Faversham Plan creates an opportunity to develop the creek basin as a Maritime Gateway Heritage Regeneration Area. Details are in FAV EYE 16. Town Quay is important as an 'anchor site' for regenerating the land around the basin. Creekside Boxing will continue to use the 1911 Pump House, The Sea Cadets no longer use the Town Warehouse, aka TS Hazard, and it will become available for multiple community uses once ownership passes back to the Town Council.
Many of you will remember the raft races, and now there is rowing on the creek. The Faversham Plan creates a planning framework designed to facilitate and encourage mixed-use development of the creek shore with public access to the creekside and complementing character of the Faversham Conservation Area as well as protecting the view of Davington Church over Ordnance Wharf.
There remains much to be done to secure a clean and navigable Creek, work essential to its long-term survival. Sympathetic economic redevelopment of the Creekside is not the whole answer, but we hope it can serve to support others who have made it their mission.
MAINTAINING A VIBRANT TOWN CENTRE
Few would disagree that our historic Town Centre with its 800-year-old charter market makes a characterful contribution to 'what makes Faversham special.' Despite the challenge, now common to high streets up and down the country, of maintaining relevance in an era of large supermarkets and out of town retail parks, Faversham Town Centre continues to act as an attractive destination for both the community it serves and visitors to our town.
The Neighbourhood Plan provides policy needed to sustain the vitality and viability of our unique and distinctive town centre.
Ground floor frontages within the town will remain publicly accessible with the development of currently vacant upper floors for residential use, visitor accommodation and businesses encouraged. It will encourage ongoing independent and local retailing, provide protection for our heritage buildings whilst enabling appropriate diversification of use including personal
healthcare and fitness food and drink, personal services, offices, recreational and cultural use.
Importantly the plan recognises the importance of maintain parking adjacent to and within the Town Centre (not everyone can or wishes to walk or cycle) to maintain its commercial viability and consequently redevelopment of the existing car parks eg the Central, Queen's Hall and Institute Road Car Parks will be protected against residential development and will only be supported in the unlikely instance where a similar alternative provision can be made nearby. This is important because as well as providing car parking, these space provide open public realm for use for the festivals that form such an important part of our Town’s character.
You can find out more about the Neighbourhood Plan from the exhibition in the town hall or from our website: https://favershamsfuture.info/
Comments