The comments relating to the strategic objectives overlap in a number of areas with F D Attwood and Partners vision response at Question 1.
It is highlighted that the prospects of the vision being executed are increased if landowners, the community, the LPA and other stakeholders work collaboratively. F D Attwood and Partners firstly would welcome the chance to work collaboratively during the emerging local plan process rather than in an attritional way, which will give the best prospects of the vision and strategic objectives being delivered. This is even more important for the Capstone Corridor as important decisions on the masterplanning of Lidsing Garden Community (occupying 119ha of the southern portion of the corridor) will be taken in early 2024, led by the masterplanning team of the Attwood family and Maidstone Borough Council alongside community input.
The highlighted strategic objectives, each of which is supported by the landowner, will also best be delivered where comprehensive scale masterplanning opportunities are available, which ideally should be within single landownership control. This will allow a long-term strategy to be formulated to implement the vision and there is greater certainty of phased delivery providing long term certainty for all.
For the urban and suburban spatial options, the noted existing shortcomings of infrastructure provision, services, transport and open space connectivity in the surrounding area can benefit from new development, particularly of greater scale and where it is comprehensively planned. In the case of the Capstone corridor, the Capstone Country Park represents a “hub” that local communities could be better connected to for recreation and health objectives. These benefits of addressing existing inequality and infrastructure shortcomings will not be delivered by the new settlement spatial option, as explained further below.
In the case of the urban area extension of Capstone, another unique benefit is that development can capitalise on the development nucleus planned at the Lidsing Garden Community (in the adjoining Maidstone borough), comprising significant areas of open space, 2,000 dwellings, 14ha of employment and a new village centre. Medway Council has the opportunity to work alongside the landowner and Maidstone Council to progress the emerging masterplan framework for the southern portion of the Capstone corridor in early 2024. This has direct relevance to the consideration of Medway’s spatial options as the Lidsing Garden Community includes a large 14ha employment area close to the M2 Junction 4 and the Medway vision and strategic objectives focus on the need for out commuting to be reduced and the vision delivering mixed communities with jobs close to housing and services. Lidsing is therefore already a planned development platform in the southern portion of the corridor and it would represent a “missed opportunity” not to give this advantage some weight when considering the remainder of the corridor (which is possible because of the single family land ownership) to the north of Lidsing. This is a unique advantage of the Capstone Corridor falling within the suburban/edge of urban area spatial option.
The single ownership and partnership approach offered by F D Attwood and Partners, as landowners, is unique and for other reasons can best deliver the vision and strategic objectives. For instance, because of the single family land ownership control, viability work already undertaken for the landowners has “priced in” necessary infrastructure and services alongside the mix of development uses. These benefits, which will also impact on the existing urban areas surrounding the site, will be delivered without the need for public funding.
Lessons have been learnt from past suburban estate development and as the Medway vision suggests, the emerging local plan must look forward, not back. The Capstone Valley is today an arbitrary residual land corridor that is a legacy of piecemeal suburban growth in the 1980 and 1990’s where major road infrastructure (which should have accompanied housing growth), was not delivered alongside it causing congestion of the network. The remaining land within the corridor, by many (particularly local residents), has been regarded as a “battleground” where no further development should encroach. However, successive appeal decisions by Local Plan Inspector’s (Lidsing…2,000 dwellings) and Section 78 appeal Inspector’s, East Hill (800 dwellings) and Gibraltar Farm (450 dwellings), have disagreed with the past landscape value assessment that has derived from past political commitments made when the 2003 Medway Local Plan was adopted.
There is now an opportunity for the corridor to be reassessed in a new and positive context, to consider objectively how the outlined vision and strategic objectives can best be delivered. For the suburban option, there is the opportunity to knit the existing urban communities together with recreational public open space and wildlife corridors, linking up with the Capstone Country Park and the planned Lidsing Garden Community and delivering a more widely accessible north-south and east-west axis that will still maintain the separate identities of the existing urban sub areas and community identities.
In the past, strong views have been held that development in the Capstone corridor would exacerbate existing congestion. 3,250 dwellings within the control of the landowner are already planned along the corridor’s length, which individually demonstrate clear transport benefits. A fully comprehensively planned transport corridor, if supported by the local plan process, would deliver even greater transport benefits to add to the east-west transport links and rebalancing of M2-J4 and J3 as well as enhanced opportunities for non-car mode improvements that are already to be delivered by planned development in this corridor.
Message Summary:
• Local plan vision and the overlapping strategic objectives are fully supported.
• Comprehensive masterplanning of land within single family control will best create the framework for the vision and objectives to be delivered and there will be long term certainty for planning decision making.
• If the vision is delivered at the suburban edge where existing urban areas can be “knitted together”, these existing communities will also benefit from new infrastructure and the planned mix of uses including new services, open space and local jobs. This represents a “double benefit” of growth compared with a new settlement where the principal planning objective is to make a non-sustainable location “self-contained.”
• To allow real visioning and consideration of how the strategic objectives will best be achieved along side it, FD Attwood and Partner’s believe that historical strongly held and emotive views relating to growth in the Capstone Corridor should be reevaluated in the new positive and visioning context that is suggested will be adopted.