The Benenden Neighbourhood Development Plan (BNDP) is promoting a major building project at Benenden Hospital in the East End.

This project would catastrophically overdevelop this corner of the Kentish countryside, losing this ancient and rural area forever.

This plan would see a total of 92 new houses at East End (24 of these already have permission). But that figure of 92 is just the beginning. The hospital wants to redevelop its agricultural estate as well as the facilities it abandoned in 2017 when it opened its current building. The BNDP steering group, working closely with the hospital, talks of converting agricultural buildings into homes or offices. Since the hospital owns surrounding farms and agricultural buildings, this plan, if passed, offers opportunities for almost 100 new homes together with a business park. 

There are only around 70 scattered homes currently in the East End. We are talking of an entirely new village.

The hospital and its farmland lies either within the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty or within its setting. You cannot build at the hospital without impinging on the AONB. Further, this is not a prettifying exercise. The goal is not to clean up an abandoned site. The ugly car parks and hospital works buildings will all remain. Nor is it a sensible use of brownfield. Brownfield land is good for development where it is an abandoned industrial site near a town. The hospital is not an industrial site. It was a sanatorium and deliberately built deep in the countryside to isolate patients.

Almost all hospital staff live outside the parish, as of course, do the patients. The heavy hospital traffic will remain. A new village at the site only means there will be many, many more cars. There are no daily transport links with shops or facilities of any kind.

As residents of Benenden, new families at the hospital sites will qualify for schooling in Benenden where only about 30% of the primary school pupils live in Benenden parish. Parents will have to drive their children to school which explains why Benenden parish council is talking of making Walkhurst Road, a narrow rural lane, a one-way street. Congestion around the village green and outside the post office and shops in Benenden will be similar to what we find in Sissinghurst today. There is even talk of moving the war memorial to give cars more room. 

And Biddenden will suffer similarly, as new commuters use Headcorn station. Castleton’s Oak crossroads and the Woolpack Corner are already danger spots. Two hundred extra cars using those intersections on a daily basis will aggravate an already bad situation.

The rural East End, with its twisting country lanes, will be indelibly urbanized while Benenden and Biddenden village centres will endure new levels of traffic congestion.

It is all unnecessary. The houses could go elsewhere. A new government planning policy promises to switch the emphasis from building in the south east to building in the north, where development is urgently needed. The change is expected this year.

Our countryside in this particular corner of Kent is unique. For instance, it is one of the best preserved medieval landscape in northern Europe. It would be a terrible mistake to take it for granted. It will not survive a major building project like the one proposed and, once lost, it is lost for ever.

Please sign this petition to add your voice. Protect our land and our countryside, for us, for our children, and for generations to come.