The battle of old versus new is never more passionately fought than when it comes to the housing market.

Those living peaceful lives in villages dread the idea of thousands of homes being built on their doorsteps, like in High Halstow where plans for 760 homes were deemed ridiculous, while those having to rent or live with their parents into their late 20s beg for more affordable homes as they find it impossible to find somewhere to call their own.

It’s a dilemma facing town planners across the county, but does the answer lie with our elders?

Earlier this month permission was granted for a new 'later-living community', just down the hill at Aylesford Quarry, and it prompted councillor Andrew Kennedy to speak of the need for more such schemes to “free up family homes” and avoid homes being “built on our green fields”.

The Malling North East councillor said there was a "hidden time bomb" in rural communities relating to the the number of homes occupied by empty-nesters, who were struggling to heat larger properties, maintain larger gardens and pay higher council tax band bills.

Quoting statistics from Blue Bell Hill village, he said more than half the houses were occupied by those over 60, and a third by those over 70, with half of those being single occupiers after losing their spouse.

So is it time to evict everyone over 60 from Blue Bell Hill and send them down to the quarry? Such a thuggish solution might have been employed by barbarian warlords of old, but in a more enlightened age you'd hope the answer's not that crude.

For one younger resident who has managed to buy a house in Blue Bell Hill village, the answer is almost as simple.

"We need to build more homes," says 29--year-old Matt Burgiss, who's lived on Maidstone Road with his wife since they bought their house two years ago, moving from their former home near Chatham train station.

"We always knew we wanted to live in this sort of area, and I think we were quite lucky," he says. "It wasn't too difficult but when we moved here we realised it's not often houses go up for sale here.

"This was our dream house in terms of what we wanted with a driveway and nice garden. I can see us being here long term. It's an attractive area here in terms of there being a lot of settled people."

In other words, Matt might one day join the demographic of older Blue Bell Hill residents hanging onto their old homes, but he says the wider nationwide housing problem can't be blamed on people who've worked for their properties and want to keep them.

"If people want to plan their life, they can, you live your life how you want," he says. "I don't think the problem comes from people staying in houses longer. It's just house prices are crazy, and it's very difficult for people my age to buy a house.

"I think there could be help for people when they're trying to get a mortgage,” he adds. "I just think we should be building a lot more homes."

Dr Robin Darton, senior research fellow at the University of Kent's personal social services research unit, agrees. And he said asking people to downsize was only realistic if there are attractive homes for people to downsize too.

"When people talk about downsizing it's talked about as if there's a lot of smaller housing available to move into," he said. "That's just not the case.

"For the majority of people living in mainstream housing, the idea of downsizing to a small house and something more manageable is quite appealing. But it's a problem finding such accommodation. People are competing with younger people trying to move up the housing ladder, because young families with limited resources are also looking to get into smaller houses. That issue is not always articulated very much."

All of which means that surely the arguments stack up in favour of retirement villages such as the one planned at Aylesford Quarry... or does it?

Dr Darton says the idea of retirement villages has been around since medieval times, and suggests the quarry plan might be a bit of a blunt solution that carries its own problems.

"What struck me about this one is it was rather cut off," he says of the Aylesford plan. "There's a lot discussion in the housing world of people wanting to live in multigenerational communities, and there's not so much enthusiasm among the active elderly for living in segregated communities.

"There's also a big issue about transport and how people get around. For elderly people living in rural areas – and there's quite a lot in Kent – there's a tendency for people to want to move further into town. Canterbury has a number of retirement places fairly central and some smaller houses that some people have downsized to. That gives people an opportunity to live in the centre of town and have easy access to facilities and culture and shops etcetera.

"When people become less able to to use their own personal transport being stuck out in rural places is not so appealing. I've visited a place in Ashford, which is a retirement complex and care home - the people there were very reliant on the mini bus company and they had to book seats.

"It does strike me as being a rather strange idea."

Instead he believes retirement housing needs to be included in new larger developments on a more regular basis - although he acknowledges large house building projects create different environmental problems.

"I think it's inevitable we're going to have to develop more large scale communities and deal with environmental issues we're facing as well," he said. "We've been avoiding these issues for a long time and it's become more of a problem. It grows and grows and grows, and that's the issue we're faced with.

"Policy makers are going to have to bite the bullet.

“Housing developments with retirement housing are part of the answer, so you've got the possibility for people to live in multi-generational places and interact across the generations, rather than giving people a rather isolated experience, which is not what people want."

But for Chatham and Aylesford MP Tracey Crouch, who supports the quarry plan, isolation is an experience already afflicting many older people living alone in larger homes.

Having been given the role as the "world’s first loneliness minister" in 2018 Tracey says she got to see at first hand the the growth of "acute levels of loneliness in the older population".

And while she admits there are no easy answers, she says developments such as the one planned at Aylesford are part of the answer.

"There isn’t a one size fits all solution but one thing we can certainly look to do is to start creating better retirement communities that are not only a desirable and suitable location but keep people connected," she says. "I like to think of applications like Aylesford Quarry as potential mini-Floridas, albeit without the sunshine and alligators. A well-designed community specifically for older residents can not only enhance levels of happiness by keeping people active and engaged but it also helps encourage people to downsize from larger homes."

Tracey helped deliver care and food packages to vulnerable elderly residents during the Covid pandemic, which she says highlighted pre-existing issues with loneliness among older people.

"One thing I was struck by was how many lived alone in family sized houses, yet many lived just downstairs for either mobility or financial reasons, " she added. "If we can incentivise people to downsize it frees up existing properties without then needing to concrete over other bits of land.

“I have always said that if Gladmans (the Hermitage Lane development) had put in an application for a proper retirement village, with secure dementia living like they do in Holland, then I may have supported it.

“Instead their development for family homes will just create identikit problems with infrastructure that we see elsewhere across the constituency.

"I know people don’t like the idea of developing the Quarry but my view is that if it is going to be developed, which it is, then let’s have a proper retirement community with fewer cars, no pressure on school places, appropriate built in healthcare provision, and an engaged community which will reduce loneliness, while also freeing up other houses in a hot housing market. Who knows, it might be somewhere we’d all want to live one day.”

Of course there’s more to issues brought about by an ageing population than simply housing, and one 72-year-old Blue Bell Hill resident pointed out that accessing healthcare would be an issue wherever they lived.

Having moved from south east London in 2004 she said she had settled into the village but would still consider moving when the time was right,

“It's not too bad here, it's a nice little village, and there's lots of people who do things for the village,” she said. “I would definitely move at some point. It's quite a big bungalow - we've got 2,400 square feet, but the garden isn't massive so that's probably what's keeping us here.

“The doctors is at Burham and it's so packed down there and you can never get an appointment. They were talking about opening a new surgery at St Peters Village.

“Luckily I've got good health so it's ok but you do think about it as you get older. There are things that could be better.”

Dr Darton at the University of Kent agrees. While healthcare provision was an important part of any housing development, he said many older people didn’t consider moving to retirement accommodation until they were forced from their homes by health issues and needed specialist care homes.

And he said it was understandable why people would want to stay where they were given the lack of retirement accommodation and care homes country-wide.

“There's a focus on downsizing being the thing to do, but a lot of people have lived where they are a long time,” he says. “They want to have their families visit, their grandchildren stay with them.

“It's unfair to target people who have worked to create their own home and developed a personal family life. It's unfair to say 'no you're under occupying' because you've got some spare rooms.”

Ultimately he said describing the situation in terms like a “time bomb” was “not desperately useful”, adding “there's pressure and an increase in pressure, but somehow the system sort of copes.”

Which sounds like a way of saying hopefully things could just work out fine – which possibly a bit boring and not normally the thing to stress in a news article.

And could that mean that describing the situation in terms of a Saxon land-grab might also not be desperately useful either? Interestingly, contemporary historians suggest the idea of a battle at Blue Bell Hill or Aylesford is improbable, and one school of thought is that the incoming Saxons populated much of England peacefully without displacing the indigenous population. Which is boring too, but does sound like a better plan than booting a generation out of their homes.

Kent Malling Chris Hunter