Otterpool Park Update: Financial and health cost revealed
We can reveal today Otterpool Park expenditure and revenue will be in the region of £2.8bn with the Council reputedly making circa £800 million by selling approx 15 plots across the 756 hectare site.
It is not known how the Council will finance any of the project, but we suspect the vast majority of it will be debt financing, meaning your children our future ratepayers and their children will be paying for it long into the future.
In the Otterpool-Park-Stage-3-Consultation-report released in July 2018 respondents raised there concerns over Health Infrastructure on three occasions. The report says:
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Concerns over the current shortage of GP and teachers, and how will that be managed within the new development.
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Challenge that there is a shortage of skilled employees (such as GP and teachers) at the moment, and how to mitigate this problem for the future situation.
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Impact on the infrastructure, services and amenities as currently these are already struggling: Lack of doctors and GP
We know the initial planning application for Otterpool Park will set out the numbers of houses to be built as 8,500 homes.
The South Kent Coast CCG Chief Operating Officer, Karen Benbow has made clear at a meeting of the South Kent Coast Health & Wellbeing Board regarding the Otterpool Park Garden Town Development:
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“that 2,000 houses (phase 1) were not enough to warrant an additional GP practice and primary care was already stretched in the Folkestone & Hythe District and couldn’t absorb the additional population. There was also concern that any extra care housing would generate additional pressures on primary care services in Folkestone.”
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