Sittingbourne Housing Plans
One of the most hotly contested topics of any Local Plan, the housing number forecasts provided by the Borough Council have managed to court controversy on a fairly regular basis.With claim, counter claim and several U-turns along the way, local politicians including Council Leader Andrew Bowles have expressed the desire for higher end growth targets and then back down to the targets set by the opposition when they were in power.
However even if you agree with the housing targets set, the distribution is massively sewed with Faversham taking a disproportionally small percentage of the quota and this following a period where again Sittingbourne and Sheppey took the brunt of the development.
Here are some interesting statistics
| Town Population | Area Population % | Area Employment % | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sittingbourne | 47,500 | 46% | 55% |
| Sheerness/Sheppey | 12,000 | 30% | 24% |
| Faversham | 19,500 | 24% | 21% |
Now if I tell you that Faversham is only going to take around 5-6% of the 10,800 new homes, you might be surprised, so what if I were to say that Faversham's entire housing quota is almost the same of the village of Bapchild. Is this fair?
Demand for housing, according to Swale Borough Council, is predicted to significantly drop off in the second half of the plan period with 75% of the houses forecast to reach completion by 2021.
This also raises some concerns about the ability of the housing market to deliver year completions way in excess of anything that has previously been achieved.
“Over the past 30 years… Housing delivery of over 800 dwellings per annum has only been achieved in five years during this period. "
Local Plan
Yet the Council believe that housing delivery of over 800 can be achieve for 5 of the next 18 years, with a peak of 1610 which seems somewhat optimistic.
The Council believes that next housing boom will start in just 3 years’ time, which would of course require a full economic recovery within the same period.
So where is this housing in Sittingbourne?
Here we will try and list the major site allocations for housing within the Sittingbourne area, but if you want to see the detail you will need to refer to the plan itself.Policy A1 - North West Sittingbourne (SW/040 - SW/073 - SW/114)
Provision of a minimum of 1,276 dwellings
The southern most portion of the site (SW/040) has an allocation of 1,066
Development period: 2015 - 2029
Page 153.
Policy A2 - Land at North East Sittingbourne (SW/069)
A minimum of 120 dwellings
Development period: 2017 - 2022
Page 157
Policy A4 - Land at Frognal Lane, Teynham (SW/071)
minimum of 300 dwellings
Development period: 2015 - 2019
Page 163
Policy A11 - Watermark, Staplehurst (SW/442)
219 dwellings
Development period: 2014 - 2020
Page 196
Milton Pipes, Cooks Lane (SW/111)
190 dwellings
Development period: 2024 - 2030
Crown Quay Lane (SW/337)
395 dwellings
Development period: 2016 - 2025
Swale House, East Street (SW/342)
95 dwellings
Development period: 2021 - 2024
Central Avenue (SW/337)
121 dwellings
Development period: 2018 - 2021
Land east of Iwade village (SW/123)
311 dwellings
Development period: 2016 - 2024
Stones Farm, Canterbury Road (SW/330)
550 dwellings
Development period: 2016 - 2029