Ship Street 70 Years of Nothing Much: Folkestone’s Most Patient Plot Finally Seeks a Future

Stand on the lip of Ship Street and look south: a 1.56‑hectare rectangle, scooped out like a giant wasp bite, dropping a vertiginous twelve metres towards the railway. Once upon a time—1956 to be precise—this was a gasworks, hissing and flaming with industrial purpose. Then the fires went out. By 1964 the buildings were rubble, by 2001 the last gasholders were hauled away, and since then the land has sat like an unplugged appliance: inert, expensive and faintly menacing.

In 2009‑11 someone even tried to fix it. A “large‑scale remediation” was undertaken, the sort of phrase that suggests men in white suits and invoices written with extra zeros. Yet more than a decade later the council is again chasing government money to remediate the already‑remediated site. Ship Street is the municipal equivalent of a teenager’s bedroom: no matter how many times it’s “done,” it still needs doing.

The political courtship began in 2015 when the district council slipped the plot into its Housing Revenue Account pipeline. In 2017 it flirted seriously—offering to buy, applying for a £2.5 million Marginal Viability Fund grant, and staging urgent meetings. Whitehall said no.

Then came June 2019, a moment of optimism expressed entirely in pleading. Former councillor Michelle Keutenius begged, “Please, Please, Please can we build council houses on this site?” Deputy Leader and finance chief Tim Prater gamely replied, “I’m sure many of us will be holding the council’s feet to the fire …” Six years on, the feet are merely pink; the houses, hypothetical.

Purchasing the land proved trickier than announcing it. After one premature press report in 2019, the council finally completed in April 2021—four years, £400,000 and a helping of VAT after its first overture. Trumpets sounded, consultants arrived, studies multiplied.

September 2022 brought fresh fanfare: a press release proclaimed a £3.55 million Brownfield Land Release Fund bid that would “mark the start of an exciting project”, complete with courtyard gardens, micro‑shops and cultural space. At the same meeting cabinet voted to ask full council for £350,000 in professional fees—because on Ship Street even optimism comes with an invoice. Folkestone & Hythe District Council

Eleven months later the government answered, albeit with a smaller cheque: £2.5 million was actually awarded in October 2023 to help *re‑*remediate the already remediated land. The master‑planners nodded gratefully and drew new rectangles; the accountants re‑ran their sums and still predicted pay‑back somewhere between “when flying cars are common” and “never”.

By early 2025 the council had a new tactic: secure outline planning permission and let somebody else carry the risk. Avison Young was hired as commercial agent—for a tidy £32,500—to persuade a developer that brambles, retaining walls and a twelve‑metre drop really are features, not bugs. The application, we’re told, will deliver “up to” 135‑150 homes, because nothing says confidence like a range.

Meanwhile the site itself sits between Ship Street, Bournemouth Road and Foord Road, a six‑minute stroll from Folkestone Central and a gentle downhill & sharp right to the harbour—prime location in every sense except the one that involves actual houses. Buddleia colonises the plateau; seagulls perch where tenants were once promised. “Significant opportunity” is the phrase of choice, repeated so often it has become a spell.

The clock now ticks. Grants come with conditions and patience has a half‑life. If outline planning materialises this spring/summer as promised, and a developer signs before the funding window slams shut, Folkestone’s great Ship Street brownfield saga may at last migrate from consultation boards to concrete. If not, we will go on admiring a masterclass in municipal procrastination: seventy years of plans, promises and perpetual remediation.

Until then, Ship Street remains the district’s most expensive waiting room—partially cleaned, and waiting to be cleaned again, trumpeted in 2022, grant‑funded in 2023, advertised in 2025, and still not quite ready for visitors. Proof that after six years of “feet to the fire,” all we’ve cooked are the council’s toes. Perhaps when they’re done to a proper crisp, the homes will finally rise from the ashes.

We would be interested in hearing about your experiences of Folkestone & Hythe District Council. Email: TheShepwayVoxTeam@proton.me in confidence.

The Shepway Vox Team

Dissent Is Not A Crime