Otterpool Park Update: FHDC and Homes England extend partnership

Updated 12:30 – 7 Nov 2025

Folkestone & Hythe is trying to turn a long-promised green light into a legal permission. With the six-month Collaboration Agreement between Folkestone & Hythe District Council (FHDC) and Homes England now run to its extension cutoff of 31 October 2025, the council proposes a new, purpose-bound Planning Agreement to keep the agency at the table until the outline planning decision is issued—with a hard long-stop of 31 December 2026. In plain terms: the relationship continues, but it tightens its focus to finishing the Section 106, finalising any updates and getting the decision notice out so early homes can start.

The context matters. On 4 April 2023 the Planning & Licensing Committee resolved to grant outline planning permission for Otterpool Park (application Y19/0257/FH) subject to conditions and a satisfactory Section 106. That was a major milestone—an in-principle approval—but it was not the final legal permission. The council’s own pages still record the status as “resolved to grant… subject to s106,” which is precisely why the new agreement exists: to complete the legal work that allows the council to issue the decision notice.

The council’s paper makes the pitch starkly: from the “outputs of the work to date,” the critical next step is to secure full planning approval, and doing so means entering “a further period of formal joint working to December 2026” with a Planning Agreement “focused on securing the outline consent and enabling the early delivery of new homes.” The Heads of Terms set targets to submit an updated planning pack within six months of signing and to secure the grant of planning permission within twelve, backstopped by the 31 December 2026 long-stop.

The mechanics are familiar but firmer. Governance stays on its three tiers, with an officer-led Collaboration Board at Tier 1 (equal votes; rotating chair), a steering group of work-stream leads at Tier 2, and technical streams at Tier 3. Otterpool Park LLP remains the applicant and will manage the programme and consultants under council direction. If the Local Planning Authority requires signatures to the Section 106 before issuing the decision, both FHDC and Homes England will sign.

Money is capped and split. Under the new draft Collaboration Agreement, the parties capped joint planning spend at £2.266 million, shared by landholding, with Homes England paying 10.7% and the council 89.3%. The new Planning Agreement estimates costs at about £2.3 million, again shared roughly 90/10, funded on the council side from the Otterpool Transition budget. The cost controls are real; the question is how much has already been drawn down and on what.

The prize on offer is “early homes.” The Heads of Terms define an early parcel of up to 500 homes, deliverable as one or several parcels without demanding big, site-wide infrastructure from day one—no major transport schemes, no wastewater-treatment overhaul, no district-wide servicing upgrades as prerequisites to start. The stated aim is first completions by 2029, while keeping the wider scheme’s standards intact.

Council documents indicate there is immediate network capacity to accommodate an “early parcel” of up to 500 homes on the eastern side of the site—behind Barrow Hill, within the Phase 1B area—subject to reserved matters and the discharge of conditions. The council’s own technical material confirms the existing potable water network has headroom for the early phases and sets out targeted transport mitigations on the A20 corridor around Barrow Hill, reinforcing that an initial tranche in this location can be supported if those works are delivered.

That technical picture matches what councillors say they were told in member briefings: that the first phase of building would begin behind Barrow Hill in Phase 1B, using existing capacity while the wider, site-wide upgrades are sequenced. Taken together, the council’s documents and those briefings point to Phase 1B as the realistic starting point for an “early homes” parcel, with larger off-site works programmed later in the build-out.

This is not the first tie-up. The council announced a six-month collaboration with Homes England on 4 December 2024, explicitly to bring in extra expertise and investor-readiness. The council’s own Otterpool page later fixed the timetable as 1 February to 31 July 2025, with a three-month extension available—precisely the extension that took the arrangement to 31 October 2025. The new Planning Agreement is the handover mechanism from that sprint to a consent-delivery phase.

Set against the April 2023 committee resolution, the logic is clear. The council still needs to complete, sign and—if required—co-sign the Section 106, settle conditions, and lodge any update pack the Local Planning Authority requires. The proposed agreement puts Homes England’s resources into that legal and technical trench, with defined milestones and a backstop date to avoid drift. If the decision notice issues sooner, the agreement ends; if not, it times out on 31 December 2026. Either way, the goal is to convert “resolved to grant” into a permission you can build against.

 

None of this sets precedent for future funding or joint ventures, the papers stress; any further deals would need their own decisions. But the risk register reproduced in the report is blunt about the stakes: delay on the Section 106 could hold up the permission; governance, finance and resourcing gaps could damage viability. Those are exactly the risks the Planning Agreement seeks to mitigate.

There is, however, a basic public-interest test that must now be answered. The Collaboration Agreement carried a cap of £2.266 million for joint planning work, and the Planning Agreement pegs a fresh estimate of about £2.3 million to get the job done. Residents are entitled to see what has been spent to date, line by line—consultancy fees, PPA and pre-app payments, legal drafting, technical studies—and how much more the council expects to commit under the Transition budget before the decision notice is in hand. In short: how much has all of this already cost, and how much will it cost local ratepayers from here?

The council is right that April 2023 changed the tempo; a resolution to grant on a new garden town is no small thing. But the credibility test is what happens next. A tight, transparent programme to sign the Section 106, issue the decision and start early homes—paired with an equally transparent accounting of spend to date and expected costs—would show the district that the Homes England partnership is delivering more than meetings. It would show it is delivering the legal permission, the first homes and the value for money that residents were promised in the first place.

The Shepway Vox Team

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