YOUR SHOUT! SHEPWAY LOCAL DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK – CORE STRATEGY John Ainsworth takes a look.

Its like the Irishman said to the traveller, “Well Sir! If your looking to go to Cork, I wouldn’t
start from here!”

Local Development Framework Core Strategy has the same ring about it; and if you were looking to discover what Shepway will be like in 2026, then you probably wouldn’t start from here.

But hold on! This is not a joke or a cheap shot at our hard pressed Council Planning staff, this is a genuine comment about the form and process that these documents are force to follow.

True! The Local Development Framework Core Strategy is an almost impenetrable agglomeration of Regulations, National policies, political directives and Acts of Parliament, but it is laid, like a delicate veneer, over the fragile physical environment that we currently know as Shepway.

If you do manage to work your way through all the relevant documents, somewhere in this mammoth exercise emerges a blueprint that spells-out how the District Council think Shepway should look in 2026.

Covering an area stretching from Hawkinge to the farthest extremities of the Romney Marsh, this vastly differentiated environment constrained by hills to the North and the sea to the South, offers limited opportunity for any grandiose development. What emerges in the Shepway LDF Core Strategy, is a genuine effort to use what we have – the land and the environment – to improve the lot of existing residents by encouraging new people to come and live in this unique part of the world, bringing with them their money, skills and enthusiasm.

And no! It is not an open invitation to desecrate the landscape with vast housing estates. The NIMBY mob need to know that the LDF Core Strategy deals with future development sympathetically; with a degree of realism that is so sadly lacking amongst the ancient, knee-jerk reactionaries that spring to attention whenever anyone wants to do anything in “their” Shepway.

But please be in no doubt, something needs to be done in Shepway. The LDF Core Strategy sets down a needs analysis that is brutal and frank in its description of demographic disparity, poor educational achievement, low disposable income, limited work prospects and plain hopelessness that affects a disproportionate amount of our fellow residents. Dealing with these issues alone would be a significant achievement but the LDF Cores Strategy goes beyond these pressing matters and takes into account the entire community and maps out a future that would see this little corner of Kent become a modern version of the desirable world that our Victorian forefathers once created.

Of course, capitalising on the fact that we have the only real Motorway to London and the new HS1 seems obvious – transport improvement have long been associated with community development – but the Shepway planners have been cleverer than that and have presented a gentle and sympathetic growth plan that will preserve all those features that make our district unique, whilst using the disused brownfield sites to maximum advantage

But what’s in it for business? The message is simple and direct. Attract a better paid, higher educated, more mobile population to an attractive seaside location, not an hours journey from London and their greater disposable income gets spent in your businesses.
It’s not rocket science!

Thank goodness our Council colleagues think the same way and have resisted any temptation to develop flights of political fancy that would have us looking like a monument to T. Dan Smith, for those of you who remember Washington New Town.

What we need to do now, is get behind the Local Development Framework and it Core Strategy and make sure that it actually gets implemented.

There is a lot yet to delve into and no doubt some bits of the Core Strategy will irritate someone or other – future articles will try to flesh out the detail – but in the meantime have a look on the Shepway website and pop a comment on the LDF Core Strategy Public Consultation document – if only to show our planning colleagues that they are not alone!