A council is to begin new discussions with a housing developer after a proposed scheme was set to be rejected by councillors for not providing any affordable homes.

Plans had been submitted to replace the former Springfield Library site in Maidstone with a block of flats up to 16 storeys high in its place.

The development, marketed as Tennyson Gardens by applicant Peker Holdings, would include 162 apartments within a single building, designed in ‘zig-zag’ form, as well as community space.

This would see the building increase in height from six storeys at its northern end, closest to Radnor Close, to 16 storeys towards the A229 roundabout.

Architects said the design was inspired by the County Town’s history of paper-making, with the relative sizes of the blocks reflecting the ratios between the international sizes of paper.

The textures and form of the buildings were also designed to reflect that of the processes used in producing woven paper.

The site’s future use has been the subject of discussion for almost a decade, and demolition at the Sandling Lane plot was due to start last year, but was stalled after large amounts of asbestos were found on the facades of the site’s buildings.

The application should have come before the borough's planning committee on Thursday, but it was withdrawn from the agenda "to allow further discussions to take place with the applicant so that issues surrounding the refusal of the application could be resolved.”

Outline planning permission was first granted in 2009 and renewed again five years later, but the scheme fell through, and the £2.8m site was sold by Kent County Council to Peker Holdings.

However, the latest proposals for 26 one-bedroom flats, 113 two-bedroom homes and a further 23 three-bedroom units were recommended for refusal in a Maidstone Borough Council report.

The recently-adopted local plan specifies some 30% of units in a development should be affordable, but none of the homes included in this scheme are described as such.

Planning chiefs also claim it fails to make an appropriate contribution towards open space.The report said: “The community provision and overall quality of the design and layout of the scheme as now proposed are significant positive considerations in favour of approving the development.

“These are on balance, outweighed by the scheme’s inability to provide any affordable housing for which there is an evidenced need in the borough which is considered to be of overriding weight in this instance.

“Furthermore, the inability to provide payments for public open space in lieu of on-site provision also weighs heavily against the scheme.”