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Small landowners who found their plots unwittingly included in Maidstone council's scheme to create a Heathlands Garden Community of 4,000 homes near Lenham have repeated their demand for their properties to be removed.
The group of 18 landowners first engaged solicitors to write to the borough council in February, saying that they wanted no part in garden community scheme, which the council is relying on as part of its housing allocations in the Local Plan Review it is working on.
At first, the landowners seemed to gain some success with the council's director of regeneration and place William Cornall telling a meeting of the policy and resources committee in March that that the area of proposed development was shifting northwards making it "probable that all 18 landowners who had previously requested that their landholdings be removed from the proposal can be obliged."
But since then the council has gone quiet.
This week the landowner's solicitors, Knights, wrote again about "the blighting effect and sheer misery that the unconsented and unwanted inclusion of their properties was having on the owners."
The firm demanded the council release a revised "masterplan" showing that the disputed properties, totalling 63 acres, had been removed.
The third iteration of the masterplan was scheduled for the end of March, but publication has been delayed until the completion of the next stage of the Local Plan Review.
Save Our Heathlands is a residents' group set up to oppose the garden village.
Its chairman Kate Hammond said: "Maidstone council appears to have something to hide.
"If their new masterplan is so compelling, why are they not sharing it with residents whose taxes have been used to pay for its development?”
One reason, she suggests, might be that the withdrawal of 63 acres of land could mean the loss of approximately 1,000 houses from the council’s plan and the key sites it requires to build the new roads and other supporting infrastructure.
The scheme has already been downgraded once from the original which originally included ambitious plans for a motorway junction and high-speed train station.
Save Our Heathlands is hoping that the change in political make-up of the council following May's elections, may bring forth a change of heart.
Ms Hammond said: “The incoming Conservative administration has committed to tighter control on the spending of public money as well as putting an end to unelected officers calling the shots.
"The Heathlands project is symptomatic of the acute failures of the last political administration.
"We are hoping to see far greater transparency going forward and that should start by sharing the latest masterplan without further delay and hopefully ending the blight and sheer misery many residents in Lenham have faced over the last two years.”
But the group is not leaving anything to chance. It has engaged a social media consultancy, the Wow Factory, to help spread the message of opposition.
The Wow Factory has already produced two campaign videos which can be viewed online here.
It has also produced a GoFundMe page to raise cash for the cause.
Maidstone council is working in collaboration with Government quango Homes England to bring about the Heathlands project, with the two bodies agreeing to share the estimated £3m cost of bringing the scheme to readiness for onward sale to developers.
The council has been contacted for comment.
