URGENT: Help us defend the Hoo Peninsula’s wildlife at the Local Plan hearings!

The Medway Council Local Plan Examination has reached a critical stage and we urgently need your help to protect the Hoo Peninsula, its Nightingales and its internationally important wildlife.  Please donate to our CrowdJustice legal fundraiser by clicking here.  The independent Planning Inspectors have now published the questions they intend to examine at the public hearings, and Save The Hoo Peninsula’s legal team has only a matter of days to prepare our written statements ahead of the first deadline.   

The Hoo Peninsula is surrounded by and contains some of the most important wildlife habitats in the country.  These include Chattenden Woods and Lodge Hill SSSI, Northward Hill SSSI and National Nature Reserve, and the internationally protected Medway Estuary and Marshes and Thames Estuary and Marshes SPA and Ramsar sites.  

At Chattenden Woods and Lodge Hill we have a nationally important population of breeding Nightingales.  These remarkable birds are particularly vulnerable to the urban pressures that can accompany large-scale housing development, including recreational disturbance, cats and other predators, noise, artificial lighting and fires.  

The RSPB has itself urged a strategic approach to protecting the Nightingales at Chattenden Woods and Lodge Hill and has called for a 400-metre buffer around the SSSI within which no net new residential development would be permitted.  

That is particularly important because a number of Medway Council’s proposed housing allocations on the Hoo Peninsula lie extremely close to this protected site.  

Northward Hill, beside High Halstow, is another nationally important wildlife site supporting Nightingales and other sensitive bird populations.  Proposed development around High Halstow brings the consequences of thousands more people living close to habitats which are already carefully managed for wildlife.  

And the threat is not limited to Nightingales.  

Every winter, thousands of waders and wildfowl travel enormous distances to feed and roost around the North Kent marshes and estuaries.  The Thames, Medway and Swale estuaries are internationally protected because of the importance of these bird populations.  

Species associated with these protected estuaries include birds such as Grey Plover, Knot, Redshank, Avocet and Black-tailed Godwit.  

Their survival depends upon being able to feed and roost without excessive disturbance.  Increased recreational activity from thousands of additional residents - particularly dog walking and other activity along the coast - can repeatedly disturb birds while they are feeding, forcing them to use precious energy reserves needed to survive the winter and complete their migrations.  

This matters enormously on the Hoo Peninsula because Medway Council is proposing around 6,000 houses across the Peninsula, and all of the proposed Hoo Peninsula allocations fall within the six-kilometre recreational pressure Zone of Influence around the protected North Kent estuaries.  

Our solicitors, Richard Buxton Solicitors, have already challenged the Council’s Habitats Regulations Assessment and its reliance upon the Bird Wise/SAMMS mitigation scheme.  

Our legal team has argued that, despite this mitigation scheme having operated for around a decade, the evidence relied upon by the Council does not demonstrate with the required scientific certainty that it is actually preventing harm to the protected bird populations.  

The evidence identified by our legal team includes continuing concerning trends amongst disturbance-sensitive waterbirds.  That is why we have argued that it is not enough simply to assume that collecting a developer contribution towards Bird Wise makes the consequences of thousands of new homes disappear.  

Now these issues are heading directly into the Local Plan Examination hearings.  

The Inspectors' newly published Matters, Issues and Questions specifically ask whether the Plan has been formulated through a sound Habitats Regulations Assessment process, whether the Council's conclusions are justified, whether the Plan properly protects internationally important SPA and Ramsar sites, and whether Natural England's views have been properly taken into account.  

They are also asking whether the Sustainability Appraisal has adequately assessed the environmental consequences of the Plan and whether the proposed development strategy - approximately 40% urban regeneration, 30% suburban and 30% rural, mainly on the Hoo Peninsula - is genuinely the most sustainable and appropriate approach.  

There will be a dedicated Natural Environment hearing on Tuesday 22 September, examining policies concerned with the protection of the natural environment and designated wildlife sites.  

This gives us an important opportunity to put the ecological case directly before the Inspectors.  

But there is now an extremely tight deadline.  

Our Phase 1 hearing statements must be submitted by 5pm on Thursday 27 August 2026.  

Our legal team therefore needs to work urgently to analyse the Inspectors' questions, review the Council's latest evidence, prepare the necessary hearing statements and prepare to represent the campaign effectively at the hearings.  

There will then be a second major stage in November, when the Inspectors are expected to examine the individual site allocations themselves.  Statements for those hearings must be submitted by 29 October, with the Phase 2 hearings taking place during November.  

For a voluntary community campaign, taking on a Local Plan of this scale is an enormous undertaking.  

We are facing a local authority, major housebuilders, land promoters and other development interests with substantial professional resources behind them.  If the Hoo Peninsula's wildlife is going to have a strong voice in this process, we need specialist legal and ecological expertise on our side too.  

That is what your donations pay for.  

They allow us to instruct specialist environmental lawyers, scrutinise ecological evidence, challenge conclusions which we believe are unsound or legally deficient, prepare formal submissions and take part properly in the Examination hearings.  

We have already come a long way.  

The concerns we have been raising about the HRA, protected habitats and the environmental evidence are now matters the Inspectors themselves intend to examine.  

But this is the stage where we need your help again.  

If you can possibly make another donation, however large or small, please do so now by clicking this link to our CrowdJustice legal fundraiser.   

If you have already donated, thank you. Your support has enabled us to get this far.

And if you cannot donate again, please share the fundraiser with friends, family, neighbours and anyone who cares about the future of the Hoo Peninsula.

We have an opportunity at these hearings to make the strongest possible case for our Nightingales, wintering waders and wildfowl, protected marshes, countryside and communities.  

We intend to use it.  

Thank you for standing with us.  

Save The Hoo Peninsula.