Unpopular plans to build a £3.6 million car park on water meadows have been binned.

Canterbury City Council bosses have confirmed it will not be going ahead with the Wincheap Park and Ride expansion - despite being given the green light for the scheme last year.

The decision has been made after Highways England experts decided they could not sign off on designs for the A2 off-slip nearby.

The plans for the main route were interlinked with those for the car park, as they formed part of a package of road-improvement measures to alleviate traffic to the west of Canterbury .

Council spokesman Rob Davies said: "This means our design for an extended Park and Ride site at Wincheap, which was approved by the Planning Committee, cannot be put in place.

"We intend to withdraw our plans. Also, the council, in its role as local planning authority, will be revoking the planning permission.

"Once the off-slip design is agreed, we will look at the implications for the current Park and Ride site as well as the potential for future expansion.

"A formal decision would be needed before any future work can begin on changing the site’s layout."

Pentland Homes was footing the total bill for the £8.8 million off-slip as a condition of its approved Cockering Farm development in Thanington.

After travelling along the route, vehicles were to be directed to a new roundabout at the current Park and Ride site.

They would then have followed a restructured thoroughfare through Wincheap Industrial Estate, onto Simmonds Road and onto the A28.

Local authority chiefs wanted to expand the car park by 228 spaces by building it on 250 metres of marshland - which they admitted would have occasionally flooded.

Mr Davies added: "The developer [Pentland Homes] is in the process of coming up with a series of proposals that it is hoped will address Highways England's concerns."

The much-maligned car park extension had been the subject of a judicial review that had been pushed back to at least March 2021.

The legal challenge was launched by campaigners after they raised almost £25,000 to take their fight against the proposals to the High Court.

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