A garden village proposal for 5,000 new homes must be supported with its own railway station, a government inspector has said.

Inspector David Spencer has finished examining the Maidstone draft Local Plan Review submitted by the borough council and has set out key changes that need to be made before it can be approved.

Those changes – known as the Main Modifications – have now been published for the public to give their views, before the inspector decides whether to include them in the final plan.

Opponents of the proposed garden villages at Lenham Heath and Lidsing will be disappointed that the inspector has not removed those allocations. Many had hoped he might, but he has made a number of changes to the policy wording.

The key change at Lenham is that a new railway station to serve the Heathlands Garden Village is no longer mentioned as just a vague possibility, but is now a requirement within the first stage of the implementation.

However, providing a station would lie with Network Rail and not the council.

The quantity of both primary and secondary school provision within the scheme has also been increased.

The Heathlands village has also been pushed back within the plan period, with no houses earmarked now until 2031, which perhaps allows for a further revision at the next Local Plan Review in about five years' time.

At Lidsing, however, housing delivery will start “no later” than 2028, and by 2042 will have delivered 2,000 homes.

Borough councillor Vanessa Jones (Ind), who is also Bredhurst Parish Council chairman and a key figure in the campaign against the garden village, said there was nothing in the modifications to give encouragement.

She said: “As far as the highways mitigation goes, there is no detail, no meat on the bone.”

What she had noticed however was that a previous provision for 31 hectares of open space to accompany the village had simply been deleted.

She said: “There are some pretty daft ideas such as putting a pedestrian and cycle lane facility down Boxley Hill. Can you imagine?”

She said: “The worrying thing is that it says 590 homes can be built in the first phase of the development before any improvement to infrastructure at all.

“The whole area is going to suffer.”

However, the inspector said: “Development proposals must demonstrate that the Lidsing garden community, either alone or in combination with other relevant plans and projects, will avoid adverse effects on the integrity of the North Downs Woodlands.”

There was a similar more robust wording to protect the borough’s AONBs, with a policy stating “great weight will be given to conserving and enhancing the Kent Downs and High Weald Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and their settings”.

Other changes include the scrapping of a policy of “safeguarding” a strategic development allocation along the Leeds/Langley corridor in order to finance a new link road, with the acknowledgement that KCC has no plans to deliver the Leeds/Langley bypass.

There is a beefing-up of the inclusion of the Invicta Barracks site in Maidstone – which is now scheduled for a minimum of 1,300 homes – with the first expected by 2027. The MoD has yet to announce a definite closure date for the barracks.

Conversely, plans for homes in the town centre are to be reduced from 3,059 to 2,500, with the reduction chiefly coming from allocations at The Broadway and Lockmeadow area.

Some will find encouragement in that Hermitage Lane has been added by the inspector as one area that requires key infrastructure development in order to facilitate housing growth – residents have been complaining about congestion, especially at the Fountain Lane junction, for years.

The inspector has set out a new “stepped trajectory” for housing delivery. Initially, until 2028, the borough will be expected to provide 1,000 new homes each year. This will rise to 1,353 new homes a year by 2038.

The council will still be expected to be able to demonstrate a “five-year supply” of housing land – a policy that many had hoped the government would be dropping.

There is also more robust talk of providing Gypsy and Traveller accommodation, with the plan being to provide 543 pitches between now and 2040. But there is a warning: “These figures are subject to review and do not represent the final number of pitches that must be allocated.”

However, the inspector does suggest some extra pitches could be found by “the reorganisation, intensification or expansion of existing sites, without the need to find additional land for entirely new sites”.

The Local Plan is important because it sets out the quantity and location where development will be permitted – both residential and commercial – over the next 15 years until 2038.

The modifications extend for 179 pages, and beyond the key sites, they also contain changes to a number of smaller allocations.

For example, Chart Sutton will find its housing allocation increased from 25 to 35, while Ulcombe’s allocation has dropped from 35 to 25.

Residents in Tovil will be concerned that the plan still contains an allocation for 250 homes at Abbeygate Farm including the possibility of an access road across the Walnut Tree Meadow Nature Reserve, which is managed by the Hayle Park Nature Reserve Trust.

Cllr Paul Cooper, the cabinet member for planning, said: “This draft plan aims to deliver the housing and employment growth the borough needs in ways which also provide key infrastructure, including supporting healthy communities and lower carbon emissions.”

He urged the public to respond to the consultation.

Over the plan period, 2021 to 2038, provision will be made for the development of a minimum of 19,669 new homes in the borough.

The review process started in 2019.

Residents can review the Main Modifications here. Click on the third item down, labelled Main Modifications Consultation.

The consultation closes on Monday, November 13.