A KENT village could see more than 100 jobs created when a care home is built.

District council planners had recommended rejecting Graham Homes’s plans for a massive 80-bed care home for elderly people and people with dementia at Hurricane Way, on a former aerodrome site in Hawkinge, near Folkestone.

But councillors sitting on the development control committee approved the outline proposals after rejecting their officers’ assertion that the care home would hold up other industry on the site.

The area has been designated as a site for business or industry for several years, since the village began to expand. Shepway feared that should the home be built, it would stop any heavier and noisier industry from setting up there.

However, Hawkinge Parish Council gave it their unanimous backing. Cllr David Callaghan told the meeting: “To refuse this application to bring 100 jobs to Hawkinge is madness. This is labour-intensive work.”

It was added that had the industry been a warehouse of a similar size, it would only have employed about 20 people.

Cllr Brian Copping added: “I don’t think it would be just the care home that would have a problem with lorries and industry there.”

The application was passed and it now remains for the Graham Care group to submit a detailed application.