Plans for 180 homes have been approved despite opposition from a hospital trust and local councils.

Both schemes had previously been granted outline permission and the council's planning committee were only asked to consider the detail of the design when they met at the Town Hall on Thursday.

The first scheme was for 80 homes, including a three-storey apartment block on land off Oakapple Lane, south west of Hermitage Lane.

It had attracted 130 letters of objection from the public and was also opposed by the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust which was concerned that the extra traffic joining the already congested Hermitage Lane would make access to Maidstone Hospital difficult for patients and staff.

Since the outline permission, the developers, Taylor Wimpey, had changed the location of a secondary emergency vehicle access from exiting onto Oakapple Lane, to exiting onto Broomshaw Road.

This was opposed by Cllr Fay Gooch, speaking for Barming Parish Council, who said that if the emergency access later became a regular access it had the potential to create a new rat-run via Broomshaw Road and Rede Wood Road to avoid the congestion on Hermitage Lane.

However, the committee passed the application with only three minor amendments: renewable energy measures to be added to the apartment block, a hedgerow boundary between the site and a neighbouring cemetery, and holes to be left in any close-boarded fencing to allow the passage of wildlife.

The second application was for 100 homes at Barty Farm in Bearsted. The detailed plan had been opposed by nine residents and Bearsted Parish Council, but the earlier outline application had received 177 letters of objection. Councillors were overall impressed with the scheme that had a comparatively low density of 26 dwellings per hectare and was for fewer homes than the allocation of 122 homes in the Local Plan.

After assurances that a woodland buffer between the new homes and existing homes in Roundwell would be nowhere less than 5m wide, they approved the plan with an "informative" or advice to the developers Dandara Ltd that a proposed 0.6m high fence on the boundary with Water Lane, should be a 1.8m high.

Cllr Martin Round (Con) said: "We've come a long way to an acceptable scheme."