Medway Local Plan (Regulation 18, 2024)

Medway's transport links are not class-leading in the south east, in the way that Dartford, Ashford and Dover are. It is a red herring to try to compete in urban logistics, as it will hold back the regeneration of the medway towns. Medway's USP is the river, and the future medway's USP will be the arts, culture, and service sector economy, with high quality housing making the most of the riverside USP. If we try to preserve these storage facilities, the regeneration will be forever held back.

If the regeneration of Chatham and Gillingham is a success, unit labour costs of the Medway towns will rise such that logistics employment will not be viable here. Preserving urban logistics centres therefore sets the plan up for failure.

Medway's USP is the eponymous river, but there is no ambition to harness its potential in this plan.
1) The river can facilitate fast and zero carbon transport around the medway towns, if we target a material change of riverside infrastructure. Think river taxis, but running on electricity, generated here.
2) The river Medway is tidal. It could be a fantastic clean reliable energy source for the Towns. This could be a flagship infrastructure project for Medway, and would be a top candidate for the local government pension scheme of the UK and other countries to fund.

The river is a glaring ommission here for movement around Medway. The reason roads are inefficient in Medway is because of the river. Use the river for movement - prioritise its development for transport, tourism and leisure - and capacity will be released on roads.

A tram system was successful in Medway in the past. Given a significant proportion of the public's preference for the past rather than the future, a clean tram system could satisfy both.

The river medway can be a transport asset, dramatically cutting road usage, and can be a cutting-edge clean energy source. By 2041 it would be shocking not to be extracting its full potential in these respects.

The UK economy is 80% service sector, 20% manufacturing. Medway's economy does not reflect these proportions, being heavier on manufacturing, light on higher-value services. Moreover, if prime real estate such as the Medway city estate is still acting as a legacy manufacturing and storage area in 2041, Medway will still be trying to compete with cheaper economies further away from London, but with SE England labour and land costs. It makes no strategic sense to preserve this losing position.

The Medway city estate is a massive opportunity for regeneration away from low value (low GDP-per capita industries) to attractive housing, innovative new businesses (research and implementation into energy capture and storage from the river, for example). Setting this out in the plan will facilitate a much stronger Medway economy, while freeing up road and housing capacity. Think about how the Isle of Dogs has been transformed over the past 30 years. If we can achieve a fraction of that progress (without the high-rise building), bringing housing and high-value Research and Development business into Medway, the economic benefit will be enormous and existing road and river transport capacity will be released.

As i have written in other sections, the river medway is a jewel in Medway's sustainable and green future, both for transport and for harnessing it's power as a tidal energy source.

Medway's economy has been hamstrung through the loss of the dockyard and more recently the attempt to compete in low value economic activity.
As a SE england economy, most of Medway's economy (arts and culture excepted) makes little strategic sense now, and will make even less sense if Chatham and Gillingham's regeneration is a success. The Medway city estate prevents Medway's economy, environment and society from becoming much stronger, cleaner and wealthier (greater productivity per capita). Medway's universities have potential but are very weak in science and engineering, so organic growth in related economic activity is unlikely to materialise. Improvement here, and a concerted effort to support the research/development sector would be transformational to Medways GDP.

Improving the housing stock will not be transformational without other bottlenecks being addressed. We need massive, ambitious, strategic change in the Medway towns. Focusing on housing is very short sighted.

The lack of pride stems from the loss of the dockyard. Houses won't address that. Nor will better housing in Chatham waterfront make Luton a safe place to bring up a family.

Pride stems from each Medway resident feeling valued, due to the set of opportunities available to them. Predominantly this is caused by a stronger, higher productivity economy and better education. Drastic economic change is what is needed.

The big opportunity is to repurpose the medway city estate into a 21st-century economic hub. Think of it as an opportunity for some of London's finance and technology businesses to access cheaper labour and real estate costs, and for scientific/tech research and development to join them. A canary wharf moment for Medway.
Doing this could alleviate the need to close Chatham docks, which are more in keeping with Medway's DNA, and would mean that jobs do not need to be lost (given Arcelor steel's position that the jobs will not be retained in the UK).

A detailed economic analysis should be performed to identify which option is best with the 2041 objectives in mind. Solving to maximise {council tax revenue, GDP per capita} and to minimise {carbon emissions, GINI coefficient} would be ideal, in my opinion, from the Council's perspective.

SGO 1,2 and 3 are likely to have very differing outcomes. SGO1 would force medway's economy to be upgraded to higher GDP per capita output, simply by moving lower-value businesses out of centrally-located, prime real estate. SGO2 would likely cause the greatest environmental damage, but would likely not upgrade Medway's economy, mainly delivering more housing.

Let's remove the word "chav" from the national vocabulary for Chatham and Medway. Medway should aspire to be great, a cultural city and emerging economic force.
The Medway citizens and visitors of 2041 should have no need for adverts. Current technology allows physical businesses to advertise effectively on handheld devices (apple/google maps, for example) and imminently these apps will be upgraded to Augmented Reality e.g. https://developers.google.com/ar/develop/geospatial meaning that our town and city centres can be dramatically cleaned up by banning physical adverts.