Eighty people attended a public meeting to discuss plans for a housing scheme on the border of the Loose Valley Conservation Area - and not one spoke in favour.

The meeting, at the Vine Church in Boughton Lane, Maidstone, was organised by the North Loose Residents Association and chaired by its planning committee chairman, Sean Carter.

In the audience were all three South Ward councillors, the local County Councillor, Brian Clark, and the Lib Dem Prospective Parliamentary Candidate Jasper Gerard.

Mr Carter praised the high quality of the housing proposed by developer Millwood Designer Homes and the low density of the 36 homes, but he said there was concern about the loss of the important green wedge dividing the urban areas of Tovil and Loose and worries about the impact of traffic on Cripple Street.

KCC Highways had admitted that the traffic lights at the junction of Cripple Street with Loose Road were already at capacity, yet was not objecting to the housing scheme, which involved adding three new vehicle accesses onto a narrow stretch of road just before a blind bend.

One resident pointed out the scheme would have much wider traffic implications. Vehicles leaving the new homes and turning right down Teasaucer Hill would ultimately end up in Tovil at the junction of Straw Mill Hill with Farleigh Hill - a dangerous junction were there had been several recent accidents.

There was anger that the developers’ traffic assessment had been carried out during the school holidays when traffic on the road had been uncharacteristically low, and criticism that KCC Highways was looking only at the traffic generation from this one site without considering the cumulative effect on Cripple Street, from other proposed development sites in the area, notably 220 homes in nearby Boughton Lane.

Jane Holman, a trustee with Hayle Park Nature Reserve, reminded the meeting that the previous year, the park had become a receptor for hundreds of lizards, snakes and slow-worms, re-homed from a development site in Staplehurst, and that these reptiles were expected to naturally migrate through the area over time. The proposed development would block the creatures’ obvious path down into the Loose Valley.

Other residents raised concerns over the effect on local services such as schools and doctors, and the sewerage system.

Bryn Cornwell, chairman of the Valley Conservation Society, warned that the field on the opposite side of the road had already been submitted to the council as a potential development site and predicted there could soon be housing all the way through from Hayle Park to Kirkdale in Loose.

Cllr Mike Hogg (Con) said: “This green wedge is very important and needs to be protected.”

Richmond Way residents Mark Burgess and Vivian Field, along with Lib Dem South Ward Cllr Derek Mortimer, had already begun a petition against the scheme which had attracted 800 signatures.

Copies of the petition can be signed in the Loose Post Office or at The Chequers pub in Loose, or online at http://maid.lib.dm/loosevalley

Mr Carter urged all residents to respond to Maidstone council with their views on the application.

Guidance can be found on the NLRA website: http://northloose.co.uk