Campaigners fear a historic Kent town will be “obliterated” by housing after a council signalled the area will bear the brunt of thousands of new homes in the borough.

Members in Swale have recommended that residential development in the coming years be concentrated in and around Faversham, rather than in Sheppey or Sittingbourne

Campaigners say they will fight the “shocking” vision, arguing it will leave the town with no rural gaps between villages.

But councillors in the west of the borough say Sheppey and Sittingbourne have already played their part in meeting housing targets in recent years.

The plans were laid out at an extraordinary meeting of Swale Borough Council’s (SBC) planning and transportation policy working group, which met to decide how to deliver 17,472 new homes over the next 16 years.

Many are already in the pipeline, either with planning permission secured or awaiting a decision, but the council needs to decide where the remaining developments should be built.

The authority’s last Local Plan – a housing blueprint for the borough – covered the period 2014-2031 but has now lapsed, so SBC must produce a new one up to 2040.

Earlier this month the working group was presented with a number of options for the dispersal of the homes, including building them on a large site in the west or sharing them equally across the borough.

But members – who argue the housing target is “excessive” – eventually opted for a “very large” site in the east of the borough, which would take pressure off building in other areas.

Chairman of the group Cllr Alastair Gould (Green) explained that any such site would likely be “occupying all the land between Faversham and the Thanet Way, and that would take off the requirement for other parts of the borough to provide land for housing”.

Councillors argued that historically the west of the borough - Sittingbourne and Sheppey - has taken the majority of homes, with the east around Faversham much more sparsely built-up.

Cllr Simon Clark (Lab), of Homewood ward in Sittingbourne, said when he was elected in 2002 “it was the case that ‘no we can’t have any houses built in Faversham at all so they’ve all got to go in Sittingbourne or on the Island’.”

“Since that time pretty much most of the development in Swale has been around Sittingbourne and quite a large chunk on the Island,” he added.

Cllr Ann Cavanagh, who represents Borden & Grove Park near Sittingbourne, said: “Sittingbourne is in this mess from what I understand because previously 85% of housing was built in Sittingbourne and the Island.”

Fellow ward member Cllr Mike Baldock (Swale Independents) added: “Don’t think this is the end of the matter – in five years we’re going to have to find more housing, and that’s going to have to go somewhere, and if it doesn’t go to Faversham this time it’ll go to Faversham next time.

“It doesn’t feel like it now but in 10 years time I think people will be glad that you’ve actually got a strategic development in Faversham and not the mess that we've had across Sittingbourne.”

Not everyone was so resigned to focusing on Faversham, however, with Cllr Ben Martin, who represents the town’s Watling ward, fearing it would essentially create a “developers’ charter for the east of the borough”.

SBC’s current Local Plan was adopted in July 2017, and planned for more than 13,000 homes to be built between 2014 and 2031.

Since then, 6,700 have been delivered across the borough, and a further 7,047 have been given permission but are not yet built.

Of the latter, 29% of them are earmarked for sites in Sittingbourne and the surrounding area, and 10% in Faversham.

Many argue that the borough, which has one of the worst GP-to-patient ratios in the country, is suffering extreme infrastructure pressure.

West Downs member Cllr Monique Bonney (Swale Ind), who is also a hospital governor, told the meeting: “We haven’t had the services that come with that housing – school places and most importantly healthcare.

“Our highway network is at its limit and our social and healthcare infrastructure is beyond its limits, I would suggest.”

An SBC spokesperson explained that the new Local Plan will take into account sites from the previous document that have been allocated but not built on, and developments that are in the works.

“This means that for purposes of drafting the next Local Plan, once existing sources of supply have been discounted there remains a balance of 6,287 dwellings that will need to be found,” the spokesperson explained.

Those homes would be “split between a very large strategic site in the east of the borough and the remainder distributed proportionately by settlement size across the borough”, they added.

This number could further be reduced if plans put forward by the Duchy of Cornwall for 2,500 homes on the south-east of Faversham, near Brenley Corner, are approved.

Some 1,800 homes are also proposed as part of the Winterbourne Fields development in Dunkirk, between Faversham and Canterbury.

Neither of these were accounted for in the last Local Plan, and if approved, would reduce the number of entirely new housing required to just under 2,000.

Boughton-based campaigner Sarah Moakes has questioned why Faversham has been chosen to deliver most of the new homes.

She said: “It’s unfortunate that the majority of the councillors who get to decide these things are from the west of the borough, and obviously they vote accordingly to protect their own patch.

“It’s nothing to do with where the need is greatest. It’s quite shocking really that we might be railroaded into having all the development at this end for nothing other than political reasons.”

As council wards are created based on population, Faversham and the surrounding area has fewer councillors than the more densely populated western half of Swale.

Of the 12 members of the working group, three represented wards in the east.

Ms Moakes continued: “They talk about it as if ‘we’ve ruined our end of the borough, it's your turn now’.”

Carol Goatham, of campaign group Farms, Fields and Fresh Air, stressed: “Really it's the government’s fault that we’re in this situation - they shouldn’t be loading Swale up with so much more housing.”

Under the new Labour government elected in July, the national housing target has increased from 300,000 per year to 370,000.

“Since Labour have been in government their mindset is that they're going to continue the Tories’ demolition of the countryside and of our farmland,” Ms Goatham continued.

“We’ll still keep fighting it, but it doesn’t sound hopeful.

“They’ve ruined Sittingbourne and now they want to ruin Faversham, because they can’t see any other way.

“I know it’s not going to solve the housing crisis, but Faversham is going to be obliterated – it’s just going to be a huge conurbation that meets up with the villages; there's not going to be any rural gaps.”

The working group’s recommendation was voted through by seven votes to two on August 8 and will now go to the council’s policy and resources committee.

Eventually, the final draft of the Local Plan will be put before the full council for approval.

The recommendation provides guidance to planning officers on where to prioritise land for homes in the upcoming Local Plan, following a call for sites.

The plan would cover housing and development from 2022 until 2040, with the final version expected to be sent to the government for approval in mid-2025.