ONE of the country’s first ‘eco-villages’ built in Kent will be about quality and not green ‘novelties’, the organisation behind it has pledged.

Regional director of English Partnerships (EP) David Edwards said a development of 500 highly energy efficient homes at Connaught Barracks, Dover, will act as an example of good quality green house building for the rest of the country.

“People do think eco-villages mean wind turbines and solar panels on every roof, and we are looking into those options, but we are not doing anything here for novelty value,” Mr Edwards explained.

“These have to be homes the sort people would want to live in, and are sustainable for the future. That means looking at things like parking, building quality, appearance, play areas, and roads first.

“We want this development to show the industry how it can be done.”

EP, the Government’s national regeneration agency, bought the empty barracks adjacent to Dover Castle in October for approximately £20million, with a view to creating up to 500 new carbon neutral homes on site by 2014

The site, vacated by the 1st Battalion Parachute Regiment in April 2006, was included in the Housing Green Paper as one of eight public sites to be redeveloped to help the Government deliver its targets of three million new homes by 2020, and 100 per cent of new builds being carbon neutral by 2016.

When development begins, the homes are likely utilise biomass-fuelled boilers run on locally sourced crops, recycled rain water and efficient ventilation systems that maximise heat retention.

Around 50 per cent of the homes will be allocated as affordable housing, and the listed buildings in the barracks would be sensitively restored and possibly used to house small, local businesses.