Petition Hits 2,000

It's emerged that taxpayers are helping to fund the building of around 500 homes on protected countryside south of Tunbridge Wells.

A government agency called "Homes England" has spent £10 million on buying fields to be used for some of the new housing.

While developers press ahead, a petition opposing the 500 homes on the protected High Weald National Landscape has now been signed by 2,300 local residents.

The High Weald National Landscape should in law see development only in "exceptional circumstances" where that development enhances the area.

The house building is set to take place on 5 connected sites south of Tunbridge Wells, shown on the map below.

The luxury home builder Esquire Developments is set to build 335 homes on the three Sites A, B and D shown in red above. Nearby sites owned by other developers could deliver 97 homes to the west of Frant Road and 30 homes off Bayham Road - also shown above.

Tunbridge Wells Rugby Club is set to be relocated from Site B to Site C a mile further down Frant Road.

In February, Esquire's Managing Director, Paul Henry, attended a roundtable meeting with Prime Minister Kier Starmer and other housing leaders. 

Esquire's news release said: "The meeting sparked engaging discussions on what interventions can be made to..remove barriers to housing delivery." Esquire's Managing Director is pictured below seated with the brown jacket.

Residents are also concerned that in 2024 Homes England paid more than £10 million for a parcel of land off Bayham Road without planning permission, which was purchased for only £100,000 a few years earlier.

Homes England says it is using the "Land Assembly Fund" to unlock a housing scheme that could put 100-166 homes on that parcel of land (Site A on map above), although residents say planning documents suggest only 60 homes are likely to be acceptable there.

One resident, Dan Dzenkowski told West Kent Radio that: "Esquire couldn't afford to buy the land from the landowner, so the public authority Homes England stepped in to buy it for them."

You can listen here to Dan's interview on West Kent Radio:

Dan argues that if the £10 million site cost was split up for each of the 60 homes to be built there, that would mean a cost of £166,000 per home - just for the land - and he concludes: "This isn't really an affordable housing solution - it is essentially a commuter enclave subsidised by the public purse."

Dan argues that Homes England should be focussing on brownfield (previously developed) sites and he believes that there's been "a creeping erosion of the rules" designed to protect our cherished landscapes.

Dan insists that Homes England: "shouldn't be funding speculative developments on land that doesn't have planning permission. They should be investing in the community, not building on greenfield land with car-dependent developments like this."

Dan Dzenkowski is pictured below at the current Tunbridge Wells Rugby Club site.

The Tunbridge Wells Rugby Club got planning permission last year to upgrade their current site with improved lighting. 

But the club now wants to move a mile down the road to a site which Dan says has "complex hydrology" and "ancient aquifers and old Victorian infrastructure that used to support that part of Tunbridge Wells".

Dan says the new site is "unsuitable" as the development would have to disrupt the land around Chase Farm to drain away the water in the bottom of that valley, affecting the ancient forest around the area and disrupting the wildlife, including birds and protected amphibians.

Dan wants local residents to contact the Rugby Club directly to give the club their views.

Dan also points out that because all the homes are planned to be built outside the boundary of Kent in Sussex, the new homes wouldn't count towards the large house building targets for Tunbridge Wells Borough Council set by central government, even though Tunbridge Wells will bear all the burden in terms of the strain on its infrastructure.

Esquire developments declined to comment to West Kent Radio.

For more views, read our previous story on the Rugby Club move from December 2024:

https://www.westkentradio.co.uk/news/west-kent-news/tw-rugby-club-site/

Latest petition updates here:

https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-esquire-development-protect-tunbridge-wells-and-wealden-s-green-spaces