Some good work has gone into the Bridge Neighbourhood Plan in recent years. The idea of a Neighbourhood Plan for Bridge is based on sound reasoning: it gives the village a strong voice in its own future and prevents us from being entirely at the mercy of Canterbury City Council.

The decision of Canterbury City Council to proceed with the Mountfield development to the south of Canterbury will bring the city to the edge of Bridge village. It is a “game changer” for the village – and if the development goes ahead it will be essential that the Green Gap between Mountfield and Bridge is preserved. Not surprisingly, this has been reflected in discussions within the Bridge Neighbourhood Plan Committee.

For reasons that are not clear, five members of the Bridge Neighbourhood Plan Committee have resigned since mid-March.  They include the long standing chair of the committee, Professor Joe Connor. Members of that committee have given up their free time to work for the good of the village, and they deserve the thanks of all villagers for doing so.

It is important that the excellent work of the committee in recent years is not lost. But clearly the committee is in no position to continue with its deliberations at the present time. There are four reasons why now is a good moment for the committee to pause in its deliberations.

First, under UK planning law a neighbourhood plan must conform to the district local plan. So the Bridge Neighbourhood Plan must conform to the Canterbury District Local Plan (CDLP), which is due to be finalised later this year. At present the draft CDLP presents two features that we should welcome: the district is not looking to Bridge to build new houses; and the Green Gap between Canterbury and Bridge is likely to be confirmed. Once the CDLP has been adopted, the village will have a better idea of what we can, and cannot, include in the Neighbourhood Plan.

Second, movements are afoot to raise money for a judicial review to challenge the Mountfield Development. If the judicial review goes ahead it will focus on air quality. Hopefully it will succeed, and the Mountfield development can be halted. Either way, it makes sense to await the outcome of this review before finalising the Neighbourhood Plan.

Third, the resignation of five experienced members from the Neighbourhood Plan Committee deprives that body of some vital expertise and experience at a crucial time in its deliberations. Some of those who have stood down have given lengthy service, and their resignations represent a loss of institutional memory that will not easily be replaced. A pause will give the village time to recruit people of the calibre the committee needs.

Finally, it is no secret that feelings are running high in the village at the present time on housing issues. A reading of some recent postings on the Bridge Village Facebook page reveals an unusually high number of postings expressing dissatisfaction with recent developments on housing. A pause in the Neighbourhood Plan process will give an opportunity for the situation to calm down.

For all these reasons, it makes sense that no further work be carried out on the Neighbourhood Plan process until the Canterbury Local District Plan has been adopted.

The following motion (proposed: David Humphreys; seconded: Kevin Jenner) will be discussed at the Annual Parish Meeting in the Bridge Village Hall, Thursday, 27 April at 7:00 pm: “That no further work should proceed on the Bridge neighbourhood Plan until the Canterbury District Local Plan has been adopted”. Please come and make your views known.

These comments have dispelled a myth that has been circulating within parts of the village: that a ‘majority’ of the village favour new housing development either on the Brickfields or to the north of Conyngham Lane between the village and Mountfield. On the contrary, it is now clear that the expressed opinion is strongly against new building, and that villagers are keen for the remaining Green Gap between the village and south Canterbury to be preserved.

This is good news – and here we can dispel a second myth, namely that if the Neighbourhood Plan Committee does not allocate sites for housing then Canterbury City Council will do this – and this may be on sites that the village does not want. We can understand where this view comes from: this is indeed the case when a city council makes clear that it intends to build houses within a particular neighbourhood.

Fortunately, however, Canterbury City Council is not looking to Bridge for housing sites. The village should welcome this, and not look this gift horse in the mouth. As we reported earlier, Bridge has escaped allocation in the city council’s local plan, the council wish to maintain the Green Gap between the village and Canterbury, and the Green Gap has the support of the government-appointed housing inspector.

Where does this leave us? We call upon the Neighbourhood Plan Committee to strike from the plan all housing allocations in the village. Canterbury City Council does not expect this from us, the government-appointed housing inspector does not support this, and the village does not want it.

This week’s decision by the Bridge Neighbourhood Planning Group to support housing developments on the Brickfields and to the north of Conyngham Lane in the neighbourhood plan was an unwelcome start to the New Year.

The decision flies in the face of advice from a number of quarters: when the Mountfield development was approved last month there was an agreement to maintain open space “in perpetuity”. And the government-appointed inspector confirmed the Green Gap to the south of Canterbury – while regrettably striking out that to the north (Mountfield: The good, the bad and the ugly ). Furthermore, an independent report  on the Bridge Neighbourhood Plan received before the meeting “strongly recommended” that Bridge Parish Council leave housing site allocations to the city council. And at present Canterbury City Council are not recommending any new housing for Bridge.

The Bridge Neighbourhood Planning Group gave no reason for this week’s decision, which leaves Bridge at serious risk of coalition with south Canterbury. There is no need to build either to the north of Conyngham Lane or on the Brickfields, both of which will erode our Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and extend the village envelope.

The same month (December 2016) that Canterbury City Council voted to approve Mountfield the Sunday Times reported that Inkberrow – the rural Worcestershire village that is the model for Ambridge, the fictional home to BBC Radio’s ‘The Archers’ – could be reclassified as a small town after developers won the right to convert a greenfield site on the outskirts of the village.

This is not just an amusing anecdote. The Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) has backed up research by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) that 1,300 villages vanished under urban sprawl between 2001 and 2011. The head of planning at CPRE, Matt Thomson, was quoted by the Sunday Times as saying that the planning system is “tilted” in favour of urban developers, “guaranteeing that many more villages will be swallowed up.”

Could Bridge suffer the fate of Inkberrow and become a town? As things stand that could well be the best we can hope for. If building to the north of Conyngham Lane is approved, and when Mountfield is completed, Bridge will effectively be a suburb of Canterbury.

Read CPRE’s Green Belt Under Siege report which warns of the threat that urban development poses to green belts and village life.

The decision by the planning committee of Canterbury City Council to proceed with the Mountfield development earlier this week came as no great surprise to the crowded public gallery at the Guildhall on Tuesday. There was no debate; not even the semblance of a discussion.

Several citizens expressed their dismay at the scheme on a number of grounds. Traffic was one of them. Driving between Canterbury and Bridge along Old Dover Road and New Dover Road will certainly be more frustrating and will take a lot longer in the future. The chair of Bridge Parish Council, Alan Atkinson, spoke clearly against the proposal in its present form, arguing that it would lead to traffic backing up into Bridge. There was a persuasive intervention from Stephen Peckham (Professor of Health Policy at the University of Kent) on the serious consequences the development will have for air quality in Canterbury, and statements from several residents’ associations on the loss of countryside, habitat erosion for bats, birds and other species, the social and environmental unsustainability of the development and the cultural erosion of Canterbury as a historic city. Rarely can the Guildhall have seen such well-argued and informed interventions from such a broad range of stakeholders. And in the end none of it mattered.

One of the most telling comments was from Councillor Ashley Clark, who started by saying that anyone who thinks there is democracy in local planning is mistaken, adding “Anyone who thinks this is a planning committee is living under a delusion… This is not a planning committee. This is a damage limitation exercise.”

He has a point. The inspector decides how many houses are built. Councils have had their budgets slashed, by up to 40% in some cases, since austerity was introduced in 2010. Cash-hungry councils have found that one way to generate income is by building houses. Even some councillors who would have liked to oppose the scheme felt their hands were tied. That is the ugly reality. So much for grassroots participation and local democracy!

There was some heckling and cries of shame from the public gallery at the end, but this was always a done deal. The final vote was 9-3 in favour, with some restrictions. Hats off to Councillors Oliver Fawcett, Nick Eden-Green and Alan Baldock for some incisive criticisms and for voting against the development.

But on a dark winter’s evening there were some welcome chinks of light. First, Councillor Clark proposed that one of the restrictions in passing the scheme be that “we vote for open space in perpetuity”. This was agreed. And there were two unexpected gifts from the Planning Inspector, who struck further housing development from the Brickfields from the local plan “given its effect on the Kent Downs AONB in which it is located”. The Inspector also confirmed the Green Gap between Bridge and Canterbury. Both were highly welcome (especially given that the Inspector failed to uphold the Green Gap to the north of Canterbury, namely the Chaucer Fields between the city and the University of Kent).

It now remains to be seen how Bridge Parish Council will respond to these welcome Christmas gifts