Proposals for a garden village on a green belt site could be dropped in order to help a council gets its threatened local plan past a government inspector.

Planning officers are suggesting that – for the time being at least – Tunbridge Wells council abandon plans for 2,800 homes at Tudeley, in order to push on to the next stage.

The garden village proposals has been met with widespread opposition from villagers, including a mass march on Tunbridge Wells Town Hall and onto London at a previous demonstration.

The council submitted its draft plan to the government in November 2021 and the planning inspector Matthew Birkinshaw held a series of meetings on the proposals between March and July 2022.

But after reflecting on the evidence, the inspector told the council in November last year that he was not satisfied that the borough had demonstrated there were the “exceptional circumstances” required to justify the release of the green belt land.

However, he did not rule out the Tudeley village, within the parish of Capel, completely, but wanted the council to provide more evidence to justify the allocation.

He himself suggested the council might find it easier to drop the Tudeley allocation at this stage, and, a year later, that is exactly what planning officers are now recommending that the council does.

Officers say they would expect to face continuing opposition to the garden village from Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council, which would bear the brunt of the traffic generated.

It means the council will be 2,100 homes short in its overall housing allocation in the plan period, but the inspector suggested the time frame for the plan could be reduced from the initial 2038 end date, and the plan reviewed again in the interim.

The plan for the garden village could yet still resurface, perhaps ten years down the road.

Meanwhile, all the time the council doesn’t have a valid local plan in place it is subject to “planning by appeal”.

This means even it refuses an unwelcome planning application, the refusal could be overturned if the developer appeals to the planning inspectorate.

The decision on whether to drop the garden village proposal will be made by the council’s cabinet on December 7 and will need to be ratified by the full council on December 13.

If agreed, the changes will have to go out to a further period of six weeks of public consultation in the New Year before the plan is submitted to the inspector again.

Save Capel was a campaign group set up in May 2019 to oppose the Tudeley Garden Village and also the council’s plans for 1,500 extra homes east of Capel.

Members were in joyous mood this week, but were remaining cautious.

A spokesman said: “While these proposals appear very positive at first sight, and thereby a big win for Save Capel and all our supporters and generous donors, there are a number of issues which we need to consider and deal with before any champagne corks can be popped!

“The work we have put in seems to be bearing fruit at last, but even if a major battle has been won, the war is not yet over.”

The scheme is being suggested by the Hadlow Estate, owned by the Teacher family, and would sit on land north and south of the London to Ashford rail-line, midway between Tonbridge and Paddock Wood.

The masterplan included a village green, community hall and playing fields, and the Estate hoped that everything will be provided on site to make a thriving community.

Emphasing its own historic roots previously, the estate promised the scheme will be “built beautifully to last” unlike what it describes as many modern “monoculture estates”.

The Estate said that decision-makers needed to take a long-term view, not the short-term approach now being recommended by planning officers.

Harry Teacher said: “The housing crisis is still with us, and has got worse since we first started drawing up a masterplan for Tudeley Village.”

Tudeley Village would be a place residents would be proud to call home.

“The Local Plan response requires long-term planning to make sure the right kinds of houses are built in the right place, with the necessary infrastructure.

“Tudeley Village can deliver homes and employment space, and crucially the infrastructure, amenities and services needed to support them.

“It would be a genuinely healthy, walkable community, unlike the car-centric anonymous development all too typical of the volume housebuilder.”

He said: “Our proposals are inspired by the work of the King’s Foundation and the landowner-led model it espouses that is already bearing fruit elsewhere in Britain.

“Tudeley Village would be a place its residents would be proud to call home.”

Mr Teacher said: “We would encourage councillors in Tunbridge Wells to consider the long-term needs of the people of the borough, and to make long-term decisions to meet those needs.”

Cllr Nicholas Pope (TWA), the town’s deputy mayor, said: “No doubt people in Capel will be delighted at the news, but it does now put more pressure on the council to find somewhere else in the borough for housing.”