Permission has been granted for a new “later living community” to cater for downsizers and divorcees in a former gravel quarry.

The development around the eastern lake at Aylesford Quarry, off Rochester Road in Aylesford, won near unanimous approval from members of Tonbridge and Malling council’s planning committee.

The outline permission is for a complex of 250-age restricted homes for the over 55s, plus 191 extra-care homes and apartments for the over 65s, and an 80-bed care home.

The £133m scheme submitted by Aylesford Heritage Ltd covers 32 hectares, although 16 hectares is taken up by the lake itself. The site sits between Bull Lane and Rochester Road, just north of Aylesford village.

The proposal includes a hub building providing community facilities, and as a bonus, a scout facility will be provided with the scouts given access to the lake for watersports.

The developers will also pay £920,000 to help improve bus services in the area and hand Kent County Council (KCC) £125,000 improve the local footpath network.

Councillors heard that the sum would likely be added to contributions from other pending developments with the hope of re-instating an hourly service along the east bank of the Medway into Maidstone.

None of the buildings will be higher than three-storeys, so as not to be visible outside the quarry hollow. The existing quarry access road would be retained as the main access.

The later living community will provide 40% affording housing, although some might be off-site.

Cllr Andrew Kennedy (Con) spoke in favour and said the scheme was needed to “free up family homes” and avoid homes being “built on our greenfields”.

He told the meeting: “Since the 1950s, life expectancy in the UK has increased by 14 years to now 83 years of age, while sadly during the same period divorce rates have doubled to 55%.

“Millions of people living 14 years longer and with over 55% of our population divorcing and now requiring two homes instead of one has resulted in the need to build seven million more homes just to accommodate those societal changes.

“Unless we want people to die younger or to remain in unhappy marriages that’s the reality we have to live with.

‘Unless we want people to die younger or to remain in unhappy marriages that’s the reality we have to live with’

Cllr Kennedy added: “There is a hidden housing time-bomb in most of our rural communities and that is the number of large family homes occupied by empty-nesters.”

He quoted statistics from Blue Bell Hill village, where he said more than half of the houses were occupied by those over 60; a third by those over 70, with half as single occupiers having recently lost their spouse.

The Tory councillor said that while many were happy to remain where they were, a quarter both wanted and needed to downsize, but could not find anywhere suitable to downsize to.

“These people are living in houses that they struggle to heat and maintain, with gardens too big for them to cope with, and mainly paying Band F and G council tax (the highest), often from a diminishing pension income,” he explained.

But Cllr Roger Dalton (Con) said he had “grave concerns”.

The Aylesford North and North Downs councillor suggested that the scheme would not free up housing for local families, but would simply drag in more people from London.

He said that 65% of the occupants of the nearby Peters Village scheme had moved out from the capital.

He also queried whether the £920k for improved bus servces would amount to anything, adding “Trenport did pay KCC £680,000 for better bus services at Peters Village, but when the bus provider withdrew the service, KCC had been obliged to pay all the money back.”

But the council’s head of planning James Bailey, said the problem was that the legal agreement the developer had been asked to sign in that case was linked directly to the 155 service and when that failed the council could not use the money elsewhere.

This time the agreement would be deliberately vague so as to full flexibility, he explained.

There were also objections from the public over traffic and from the British Horse Society which objected to the lack of bridleway provision in the plans.

Spokesman Ann Riley said there were 9,190 passported horses in the borough – the equivalent of one for every five households – with riders contributing some £50m to the local economy.

She suggested it would cost the applicant little to provide a safe bridleway to run alongside Bull Lane to connect two existing bridleways and partiablly compensate for the increase in traffic and added danger for riders.

Details of the application can be seen on the Tonbridge and Malling website by entering the application reference number 22/01909.

The developer’s agent, Hamish Buttle, said the scheme would provide “a high quality niche development for older residents”, and would re-use despoiled land that had been a quarry for over 100 years,

He said the £133m scheme would also provide more than 400 jobs in construction and create 70 long-term jobs in social care.