Few issues raise the political blood pressure more than house building and the prospect of developers gobbling up swathes of green belt land in the Garden of England.

With council elections looming, could it prove a decisive issue? Political Editor Paul Francis reports.

Sprawling developments of hundreds of homes have become a familiar site in recent years and it is, so far as developers are concerned, a welcome one.

Under titles that evoke - or try to - images of a rural idyll, advertising billboards beckon us to ‘garden cities’ and ‘garden towns’ and even villages. But the seductive sales patter is one thing. For others, the sight of bulldozers carving up fields and digging foundations is not something to be welcomed.

Kent is at the centre of an increasingly antagonistic battle between residents and developers and it is a battle that could be decisive at the council elections.

The numbers are huge: Otterpool Park scheme in Folkestone will see 10,000 homes; 2,500 homes could be built on land that forms part of the estate of the Duchy of Cornwall, Prince William, near Faversham; a plan for 5,000-homes at Lenham, to be known as Heathlands; a so-called ‘super estate’ of 3,200 homes on land linking two villages east of Canterbury.

The battle lines are straightforward in many respects. Opponents say the Garden of England is under a unique threat and the pressure on roads and other infrastructure and the need for more schools and health facilities is often overlooked. Meanwhile, developers say they are responding to a pressing need for more homes as the economy recovers.

If you think you have heard all this before, it’s probably because you have. House-building has been at the heart of an attritional political battle for years: two decades ago, the former Conservative leader of Kent County Council Lord Sandy Bruce-Lockhart took on the then Conservative government over house-building targets under the slogan that the county’s countryside was ‘non-negotiable.’

Fast forward to 2023 and it seems the ground has barely shifted. Councils are digging their heels in over housing targets while trying to keep developers at bay.

The political impact was arguably first felt in the previous round of council elections in 2019. It saw increasing support for parties outside the political mainstream, with independent groups flourishing.

The Conservatives lost control of Swale council - replaced by a rainbow coalition which declared that its first priority would be to reduce house-building targets.

Cllr Mike Baldock, who now leads the council’s joint administration and heads the Swale Independents, has no doubt house building is an election issue again.

He said: “I think that housing will continue to be hugely problematic for the Conservatives all the time they are failing to implement their promises to remove housing targets. What we need is housing that meets local needs. So we need lower numbers and a more appropriate type of housing. When you're getting a housing estate we spent years fighting, and is then passed [approved] by the Secretary of State and developers are flogging them off at £600,000, that's not doing anything to help local housing.”

As to the additional infrastructure needed - such as access roads, extra school places and health services - he says: “It is a joke…it cannot cope. We've got one of the worst GP patient ratios in the entire country. When you have a Tory government imposing targets on us and Labour pretty ineffective in their response, people will look to candidates who say they are going to fight against too much housing.”

That is not how the Conservative leader of Maidstone council sees it. The authority has seen housing development rise significantly and its leader is unapologetic. Cllr David Burton says all parties have to recognise that there is an issue.

“If you look at the policy for all of the major parties, they all agree on the numbers needed… the Lib Dems actually have a higher national target than the Conservatives. So if we're honest with one another, the housing need is massive. And then it becomes an issue of what is the best way to solve it?”

He cites plans for 5,000 homes at Lenham - another ‘garden city’ - as a way forward.

“The way it is structured is that it captures the uplift in the value of the land to provide a new rail station, the doctors’ surgeries; the secondary schools and that, in my opinion, is probably one of the better ways to tackle things. I don't think there's any silver bullet that makes building the number of homes that are needed in this country palatable. But you know, my son, my daughter, my friends and my granddaughter, they'll never get on the property ladder; they can't afford it.”

He is nevertheless adamant that the council’s policy of trying to do what it can to help the less well off get on the first rung of the housing ladder is the right approach.

The figures appear to back up the claim: Maidstone delivered the highest number of affordable dwellings in Kent with 408 for 2020/21 - accounting for 29.6% of all additional homes in the area.

The Green party, which has also benefited from concerns over house-building, says it is not just an issue around numbers but building homes that are appropriate to the climate crisis.

Maidstone Green councillor Stuart Jeffrey said: “We do react viscerally to houses being built on green field sites; we have to recognise that farmland and woodland is essential as we head into climate chaos and environmental collapse. High density housing on brownfield sites is a priority. We need to minimise building on green field where we can.”

“Developers say it's not sustainable to build them more expensively and to better quality. Well, that just means you're building unsustainability. So whichever way you cut it, it's unsustainable.

Labour says the government needs to be much clearer on targets, pointing out that since the minister Michael Gove announced a pause on numbers, councils have remained in the dark and unable to sign off on draft plans.

The leader of the opposition Labour group on Medway council Cllr Vince Maple said the delay meant the authority’s housing plans were in limbo.

“We need to get on with it. And if the government is making promises about changing targets, we want to see that information. But even if we press start on the process today, by the time some of those things roll through, it's going to probably be 18 months to two years before anything could be delivered anyway, so we'll of course be listening carefully. We've lobbied in the past to say we don't think the number is achievable. There's no point in having a target unachievable.

The debate on housing is often defined by the ‘Nimby’ factor; but it has spawned a counter-argument dubbed the ‘Yimby’ factor - standing for ‘Yes In My Backyard.”

While its focus on the lack of affordable housing is generally directed at cities, campaigners say the same challenges apply in counties.

John Myers, a ‘YIMBY’ campaigner says the decline in new homes being built is the central problem: “Housing affordability across the country is at an all time low, The younger generations are being faced with fewer opportunities to buy their own home, and that's fundamentally because for some 70 years now, we haven't built enough housing to keep up with rising incomes.

“Councils have a very difficult time in it because they're very constrained by rules set by central government. And the system makes it hard for them to find ways to enable more good quality and affordable housing that is popular with the local community. So we're pushing for councils to be able to allow developments that can actually be popular, that meet local community needs. And that we think is the only way forward. It needs change at national level to enable councils to do what they want to be doing.”

While many see Kent as overrun by housing developments, government figures suggest there has been a shortfall in actual new homes.

Data from the government’s Housing Delivery Test (HDT) results for 2021 indicate 10 out of 13 of Kent’s councils didn’t hit their housing targets.

In fact, four councils in Kent saw steep drops in their housing delivery compared to five years ago. From 2017 to 2021, the amount of new housing fell by 31% in Ashford, 60% in Tonbridge and Malling, 39% in Canterbury, and 48% in Dartford.

According to a property consultancy Land Tech, the restraints on development in Kent are partly due to the amount of Green Belt land, which at over 72,000 hectares accounts for 19% of Kent’s total land area.

Add in national parks, Areas of Outstanding Beauty (AONB) and Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and the figure rises to 179,000 hectares of land – 48% of Kent’s land area.

The government has pressed pause on its plans that would see Kent having to build 300,000 new homes but appears close to making a strategic retreat in the face of councils' anger at having top down targets.

Boris Johnson's promise that there would be no more homes 'jammed in the South East’ could prove sticky without some kind of new government directive. But in a sign that it is in a corner, the government is reportedly considering allowing councils to keep all the money it generates under 'right to buy' sales for two years; previously, the money raised was split between the council and the government.

Like all governments, the key is to find a way to satisfy those fighting to preserve Kent's countryside at the same time as encouraging developers to step up to build more affordable homes for the next generation.

It is a dilemma but with councils hostile to what they consider a clear and present danger, there will be political casualties. And some of these we can expect to see on May 4.