A long-awaited slip-road off the A2 into Wincheap is set to be given the green light for a second time next week.

Canterbury City Council (CCC) planning officers have recommended the £8.8 million project be approved by members at a vote on Tuesday.

Permission for the junction, which would take coastbound traffic off the dual-carriageway, was first secured in 2018 but lapsed three years later before any work began.

Now, a fresh application from housebuilder Barratt David Wilson (BDW) is set to be considered, with the developer obligated to fund the construction of the off-slip.

It was a condition of planning approval for BDW’s 750-home Saxon Fields development in Thanington that the junction must be delivered before its 450th dwelling is occupied.

Another caveat states the slip-road must be paid for - or a contractor put in place - before 300 homes are being lived in, but BDW has applied to push this back to 332.

As of September, 231 of the properties on the estate were occupied.

BDW argues its bid for a “modest increase” will allow further development to take place on parts of the Saxon Fields site that have full planning approval.

It has faced delays as Natural England’s concerns over the impact of residential developments on water quality at the Stodmarsh Nature Reserve has curtailed housebuilding across east Kent.

The proposed slip-road will take motorists off the A2 at Wincheap and onto a new traffic-light controlled junction at Ten Perch Road, where vehicles will head either left towards the retail park or right onto the A28.

Its main purpose is to reduce the amount of traffic coming off the A2 at Harbledown and into Canterbury, clogging up the city’s ring-road.

The slip-road would cut across a section of the Wincheap Park and Ride site, resulting in the loss of X spaces.

In 2019, CCC gave itself permission to expand the bus facility onto the neighbouring Wincheap Water Meadows, but the following year it binned the proposal in the face of a huge backlash from environmental campaigners.

If the new slip-road is approved, BDW will help fund the exploration of alternative options for offsetting the reduction in Park and Ride spaces.

A number of objections have been made against the application, with a major concern that the new slip-road will divert more traffic into an already congested Wincheap.

Plans for a Wincheap gyratory system, which would see a stretch of the A28 out-of-bounds for traffic heading into Canterbury, was due to start in 2022 but has been postponed twice since.

Bosses behind the scheme, which would transform the industrial estate in Simmonds Road into a one-way road with two lanes, said in September they could not offer a timeline for the delivery of the project as Kent County Council continues to deliberate over amended plans.

A decision on the slip-road will be taken by CCC’s planning committee on Tuesday, with approval recommended.

Planning officer Andrew Gambrill writes: “The new coastbound A2 slip is identified within the Local Plan as a key piece of transport infrastructure that will both support growth and encourage more sustainable patterns of travel into and within the city.

“It represents part of the city council’s strategy to improve air quality in the Wincheap part of the Air Quality Managaement Area and beyond.

“Taking all matters into account I recommend that planning permission be granted.”