23/502113/OUT | Outline application for the erection of up to 250no. dwellings, including affordable housing, public open space, landscaping, sustainable urban drainage system (SuDS) and vehicular access point (All matters reserved except for access). | Land At Ham Road Faversham Kent

• This is best and most versatile agricultural land,
• The Faversham Society shares the concerns the Lower Medway Internal Drainage Board raised.
• We are very concerned about the impact on wildlife and habitat expressed by local people and the Kent Wildlife Trust. We understand that the site has the following priority species:
• Corn Bunting;
• Lapwing; and
• Redshank.
• We strongly support Rebecca Walker’s submission on affordable housing
• The Faversham Neighbourhood Plan has allocated sites which meet SBC’s requirement for housing within the parish boundary – this is an unwanted and unnecessary development proposal.
• The development is not required to meet the Borough’s 5-year housing land supply
• Ham Road and access to the town cannot is too limited for the car movements generated by this proposal. The only route into Faversham town centre is via Davington Hill and West Street which already have traffic problems. The development would add to existing problems on Ham Rd which is already congested with traffic from all the new houses being built on Oare lakes.
• “Springhead Road” suggests the presence of a watercourse that should be investigated.
• The site lies just south of the Swale SSSI, Ramsar site and SPA, and would be visible from it, so it would change the character of that designated landscape.  It also lies to the north of Faversham so it would adversely affect the view of the town from the north Kent marshes and indeed the entire relationship between the two.  It is immediately adjacent to a Local Green Space at Springhead Road and would block off the currently open northern side of that playing field/recreation ground. There is open land beyond Springhead Road with views to Ham Marshes. Part of the existing footpath route to Ham Farm would lead into site with housing alongside, affecting the character of the footpath.
• The Swale Landscape Sensitivity Assessment 2019 identifies the application site within area FM6, noting that the site is arable farmland. It concludes that:
• “This flat, visually exposed area on the edge of the marshes forms part of the wider setting to Faversham and Oare, and has a strong relationship with the adjoining Locally designated landscape. These attributes indicate a high overall sensitivity to future change from residential and employment development.”
• In our view, flood risk should preclude building on this site. We have overlaid the site on to the   `Climate Centre Interactive Map (below) which shows the site as flooded in 2100 on a medium risk scenario taking into account the Leading Consensus opinion on Sea Level rise (IPCC 21).  IPCC 23 is now published in a preliminary summary appraisal which highlights the acceleration of global warning and the prospects of 1.5c being reached in the next 17 years if the current rate of  mitigation is  not  accelerated, which we think is unlikely.