PRESS RELEASE: Sevenoaks Town Council expresses deep disappointment with District Council's decision to grant Sevenoaks Gasholder planning permission

Published: 19 October 2024

Sevenoaks Town Councillors expressed their deep disappointment at last night’s [18.11.2024] Planning & Environment Committee, as to the recent outcome of the Sevenoaks Gasholder Station planning application. The aforementioned application, which proposes 136 new homes as well as a ten storey rotunda on the former Gasholder site on Cramptons Road, was Granted by Sevenoaks District Council’s Development Management Committee on 7th November 2024 – with the Chairman’s Casting Vote deciding the final resolution.

This outcome comes despite and against design guidance in the Sevenoaks Town Neighbourhood Plan – an adopted planning policy document produced by the Town Council and endorsed by local people at Public Referendum in May 2023 – which sets out design principles for any future development on this site and recommends “planning applications on [Sevenoaks Gasholder Station] should demonstrate that they will deliver the relevant benefits […] a scale and massing that responds to the context (i.e. two storey buildings on Cramptons Road but with potential for four storeys on Otford Road)”.

It further disregards the Town Council’s strong recommendation for refusal, 517 written representations from members of the public objecting to the proposal, objection from South East Water on the grounds of potential risk to groundwater supply, and spoken representation on the night of the DMC meeting from Northern Ward Councillor, Cllr Dr Canet who spoke on behalf of the Town Council, Sevenoaks District Councillor Cllr Leaman, as well as a representative of the Bat & Ball Residents Association.

Sevenoaks Town Councillors noted last night that the outcome might have been prevented, had an up-to-date Local Plan been in place. Local Plans – which are the responsibility of the Local Planning Authority (Sevenoaks District Council) play an important role in ensuring that development and the required housing supply is appropriately designed and located in the right places which can accommodate this while meeting the housing needs of the area. If in place and up to date, they can protect against inappropriate development by identifying the housing need and allocating housing sites and numbers in order to demonstrate that this can be met without further development or uplift of housing densities. They can further set parameters on things like scale, height, design and massing – however – when a Local Plan is out of date, a “presumption in favour of sustainable development” is triggered, which significantly tilts the balance of planning application appraisals in favour of their approval. This, Councillors noted, is essentially what happened with the Sevenoaks Gasholder site, with the Development Management Control Committee members having expressed doubt as to whether a refusal of the planning application would “hold up” against a Planning Inspector at Appeal.

Sevenoaks Town Councillors have therefore urged the District Council to accelerate progress on their draft Local Plan 2040, in order to prevent further inappropriate and disproportionate development from taking place.

Images below have been extracted from the Case Officer’s presentation to the Development Management Committee on 7th November 2024, and show both CGI and elevation plans for the approved development. The full District Council meeting is currently [as of 19.11.2024] available on its Youtube page, and can be viewed from the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qysgFS6Fmjg&t=10s

Full copy of Sevenoaks Town Council’s recommendation for refusal is available via the Minutes of the Planning & Environment Committee dated 7th October 2024 (Pages 16-17), and is supported by an informative report as well as copy of South East Water’s statement (see Pages 22-28)

A brief summary of the supporting grounds for refusal are as follows:

Layout, height and density are contrary to that proposed via local policy – including the publicly endorsed Sevenoaks Town Neighbourhood Plan which caps the acceptable height at four storeys on Otford Road
Overdevelopment and out of character to the surrounding buildings
Design and materials are out of keeping with the local area and supporting local policy
Negative impact to the Green Belt and Site of Specific Scientific Interest
Negative impact to visual amenity
Overlooking and loss of privacy to neighbours
Insufficient parking
Lack of social housing
Risk of pollution to surrounding watercourses and local water resources, with explicit support given to South East Water’s comments published 12th February 2024