We are a small village of 152 houses in Kennett, East Cambridgeshire.  The District Council have agreed to purchase a large 90 hectares of good agricultural farming land in the village but outside of the development envelope. 

The District Council want to bring in their own building company and build in excess of 500 houses, a 312% increase of houses on this land.

They are the purchasers, builders and ultimately the authority that decides if this development goes ahead! How can that happen?  It is a conflict of interest.

The Council have ignored smaller proposed developments that the villagers would support, in favour of their own oversized development that they will profit from.

Please help our village by making a donation so that we can get legal representation to fight this disproportionate development.

Help stop the District Council riding rough shod over the Community.

The Full Story

Kennett Village is the second smallest village in East Cambridgeshire and has been classified as a 'small village' in the District Councils Local Plan for many years. We have 152 houses, approximately 300 people living here, no shops, no mains sewerage or gas and very poor infrastructure for expanding. We do however have a train station with a very limited service and a very small primary school and a part time church.

In 2016 East Cambs District Council called for land for development and were offered this huge plot of land of approximately 90 hectares.

ECDC placed an offer on this land  and then set about paving the way to build in excess of 500 houses on this land using their own building arm Palace Green Homes.

ECDC then decided to change the size of the village of Kennett in their local plan from 'Small village' to 'Medium village' in order to accommodate this huge proposed build.  This meant changing their own criteria of how to assess the size of a village from an objective one (how many people live there) to a subjective one (a point system based on transport & facilities).

Under the new system they can now build as many homes as they want whereas they would have been restricted to less than 20 houses if left as a small village.

Secondly they then approached some villagers to form a Community Land Trust ( a small group of trustees) to which they sold the notion that we the village, would have a say in helping to plan the new Garden Village.

The majority of the village from the outset insisted that they did not want a development of this proposed size however ECDC & CLT have set out all along to convince the villagers that the build WILL go ahead and if they don't go for this proposed 500 plus then we will get another developer in who will build in excess of 1000 new homes and ECDC will be powerless to stop it.

Despite many objections to this proposed development in the 2017 draft local plan, these were ignored and 'disappeared' when the new draft plan came out in October 2017.  The other thing that had 'disappeared' was the competition.  All the other proposed developments including a 110 house scheme with village walks which would have been far more appropriate in scale and infrastructure than the ECDC one, had been taken out of the plan, leaving just their own.

The CLT, working closely with ECDC has misled and inflicted fear in the villagers from the word go. The CLT and ECDC have not had wider consultation with the village about this matter and have ignored the concerns of well over half of the village.

Currently we are at the stage, where lots more objections have gone to ECDC to oppose the content of the new draft plan and in particular this disproportionate build.  An independent Inspector will look and consider these valid objections in early summer 2018.  If he/she dismisses them then a planning application will be submitted in October 2018.  Of course we know that part of it will be just a formality as ECDC will be considering their own application with their own builders.

We believe that the process that ECDC and CLT have taken so far is unjust and the due process has not been followed. We trust in the British justice system and plan to mount a legal challange.

We would therefore be really appreciative if you could help us by donating a few pounds to help fund a barrister to challenge this David v Goliath case. 

After all if the District Council can do this to a very small village with no amenities, then no area whether it is brown belt, green belt is safe.

We support housing being built in our village but it must be proportionate to the existing village.

Thank you