Campaigners opposing two huge housing developments have admitted they have lost the battle to stop them going ahead.

Simon Finlay and Gabriel Morris met those leading the fight against proposals to build 7,000 homes near Maidstone, to assess the cost…

The late, great double-winning Spurs captain Danny Blanchflower may have been something of a wag, but he had an impish, rather cryptic, turn of phrase. After one defeat, he reflected: “Everything in our favour was against us.”

After years of campaigning and battling, the struggle at Lenham and Lidsing to prevent thousands of homes being built is all but over but its principals might conclude that maybe Danny might have had a point.

The people certainly felt right was on their side, their arguments sound, thought-through and developed.

But it seems no matter the strength of the case against plonking 5,000 homes on Lenham Heath or ripping up the countryside for 2,000 around the 13 dwellings at Lidsing, the odds were always stacked against them.

The newly-installed Green Party leader of Maidstone council, Stuart Jeffery, who opposed both, says he is now resigned to “making the best of it”.

Separate attempts to get High Court judicial reviews on both failed, effectively ending any realistic prospect of stopping the schemes.

Both campaigns garnered massive local support, arguing they were in the wrong places and lacking the necessary access and infrastructure to cope with the scale of development.

Ironically, Cllr Jeffery now leads the authority which originally initiated the Lenham Heath proposal alongside the government-backed Homes England.

The formerly Tory-led Maidstone council, under leader Cllr David Burton, adopted the scheme into its official Local Plan earlier this year before being voted out of office at May’s elections.

Vanessa Jones has lived in the same house all of her 62 years, immersed in Bredhurst from the cradle. She now shares it with husband Martin.

The thought of 2,000 homes built on 127 hectares of arable land fills the 1971 Bredhurst May Queen with dread and a sense of devastation that almost renders her speechless at times.

The former civil servant is nothing if not a fighter. She put her mind to tackling antisocial behaviour, off-roading vehicles and fly-tipping on nearby woodland and set up a charitable trust to manage its future. It earned her the British Empire Medal.

Mrs Jones is friendly and direct, certainly, but like many of her fellow campaigners, the last five years’ experiences have made her tougher and more sceptical.

Dispassionately, she reels off a list of reasons why the area is totally unsuited to a massive development, not least the already congested roads being unable to cope with an estimated further 5,000 cars.

Standing in a field which will soon be consumed by yet more houses in a borough which has already had many thousands imposed on it by central government, she expresses hopes her role as a borough councillor will help to mitigate the worst of what is to come.

She is part of the Green Party/Liberal Democrat alliance running the council, although elected office was only ever a means to an end.

Mrs Jones stood as a councillor on an independent ticket, without a party apparatus, handing out leaflets and canvassing shoppers at Grove Green Tesco, near Maidstone, before the election.

“The struggle is over,” she concedes. “I’m devastated and I find it really hard to put into words. I started this campaign and for the past five years it has overtaken my life.

“The paperwork, thousands and thousands and thousands of pages, the terminology, organising things, meetings…it completely drains you.”

Now that the battle is lost, will the Joneses move?

“I really don’t know,” she says. “We’ve talked about it, seriously thought about it. You don’t know what will happen but we do know it will change our whole way of life.

“It will be so upsetting to watch everything in my life that I have loved completely obliterated.

“Local people are devastated too - we just feel gobsmacked. It’s unsettling for them.

“I see my role as a borough councillor is to get as many mitigating measures as possible.”

Prior to the High Court hearing last month, a £100,000-plus process largely financed from local pockets, Mrs Jones was convinced Bredhurst Parish Council’s was a compelling case.

The lawyers at Leigh Day, who are specialists in taking on local authorities, reckoned it was strong too.

When exposed to the paperwork supplied by Maidstone council, Mrs Jones quickly realised that the other side could mount equally compelling, ultimately better, arguments.

Save Our Heath Lands (SOHL) at Lenham also failed to convince the High Court of its objections at an even earlier stage in the process than Lidsing.

One of the most vocal opponents has been the chairman of the local parish council.

John Britt has vowed to carry on holding Maidstone council to account despite being left “exhausted” by the six-year battle.

Asked if he will sell up and go, the former civil servant says: “All my life I have worked on the premise that stuff matters. I am going to stay because it matters.

“It leaves you totally exhausted. Don’t forget I am a volunteer - all parish councillors are volunteers and we don’t get paid for doing this. At one point during the Local Plan inquiry, Maidstone council had four King’s Counsel, so it was always real David and Goliath stuff.

“We were David, naturally, except we haven’t won….yet.”

By that, Mr Britt means he is doubtful the Heathlands “garden community” plans will be completed in their present form and might even collapse completely. Certainly, that is his fervent hope.

Did he ever feel like giving up? “No. Never. It’s because I am so bloody-minded and belligerent, I suppose. But it’s been exhausting.”

Obstacles around A20 traffic congestion, land ownership, water, sewage and a proposed railway station it seems there is no money to build could hold Heathlands up for many years, he claimed.

Mr Britt said Cllr Jeffery’s pledge to “make the best of it” is disappointing.

He added: “We recognise that this administration inherited this flawed and biased plan from the previous administration - however, for a council led by the Greens and Lib Dems, who have safeguarding the countryside at the heart of their policies, it is very disappointing.”

Asked how local people have reacted to the outcome, he says: “They feel they were had over. They know it won’t work on any level - for instance, if there is a new railway station, they’d probably have to close the stations at Lenham and Charing. The whole thing is probably undeliverable.”

David Burton, the leader of the council prior to Cllr Jeffery securing power, is clear government housing targets mean that homes “have to be built somewhere”.

His Conservative administration’s final act before losing control of the council in May was to vote through the Local Plan, which contained both Lenham Heath and Lidsing.

He says: “I struggle with the assertion people were ‘had over’ - the process was transparent.

“I think we have to face up to the fact that we need the housing. The new government says that we need the housing and a bit more. The new administration is going to struggle about where to put the next lot.”

Many believe the “next lot” will be in Marden.

Cllr Jeffery, who intends to stand in Maidstone in the county council elections next May, says: “It wasn’t our Local Plan and we were not happy with it but we’re stuck with it. The choice is that we engage and ensure the developments are sustainable or we withdraw and let the developers have a free run.

“The latter approach would be disastrous. So let’s work with everybody and make it the best we can make it.”

Next month, opponents of schemes will be asked to participate in Stakeholder Steering Groups in which opponents will join the council and other interested parties, including the developers, to participate in providing feedback to the process as each develops.

Ironically, according to the proposed terms of reference of the groups, Mr Britt and Mrs Jones might be expected to help in “removing blockages” from and “promoting” the very plans they have spent considerable time and emotional energy trying to obstruct and demote. That might be yet another battle.