Otterpool Park: More Than £76m Spent, 0 Homes Built — Ten Years After Folkestone & Hythe’s Garden Town Land Buy

More than £38,967,500 has been spent assembling land and property for Otterpool Park (according to the Land Registry and the council’s asset-register spreadsheet). Add £37,195,118 paid to suppliers and consultants (gross, from the council’s payments-to-suppliers transactions, Feb 2016 to 16 Oct 2025) and the bill reaches more than £76,162,618 — with no homes built and no physical build-out started.

Rome wasn’t built in a day — nor a year, or even ten years — but residents are entitled to ask what, exactly, a decade of spending has bought.

The decade-long bet: buy land first, build later

Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s own published Q&A framed the original 2015 purchase in blunt, investor-style terms: “We bought our land in December 2015 for £5m as a strategic investment.” 

The Shepway Vox Team reported the council’s first purchase of land linked to the Champney family in early Jan 2016. Since then, the council’s land assembly has expanded into a much larger patchwork intended to underpin a new settlement of up to 8,500 homes.

“Outline permission” is not the start gun

On 4 April 2023, the planning committee resolved to grant outline planning permission for the 8,500-home scheme. 

To most lay readers, “permission” sounds like “go”. In reality, it often means “go — once the legal plumbing is finished”. In Otterpool’s case, recent local reporting has highlighted that a decision notice cannot be issued until the Section 106 agreement and conditions are finalised. 

Even the project’s own masterplan page still describes the team as “working towards securing the outline planning consent” and talks about “delivery of new homes from 2027” — wording that reads less like a starting pistol and more like a holding pattern.

National coverage has also pointed to 2027 as the proposed start for construction. 

Where the money has gone: lawyers, planners, “accountancy” and the project company itself

The supplier payments dataset provided shows a familiar profile for a long-prep “new town” scheme: heavy professional services, masterplanning and programme costs — the necessary (and expensive) prelude to any roads, drainage, utilities or bricks.

On the face of the transactions, some of the biggest payees include:

• Otterpool Park–related entities (the project vehicle),

• major consultancies (e.g., Arcadis),

• and legal/planning specialists (e.g., Pinsent Masons, Tibbalds, Lichfields).

That shape is not, by itself, evidence of wrongdoing. But it is evidence of what residents can see with their own eyes: an enterprise still spending heavily on getting ready — while the site itself remains unbuilt.

The council’s case: partnerships, infrastructure first, and “accelerating delivery”

From late 2024 into 2025, the council publicly leaned into “acceleration” language, centred on Homes England and enabling infrastructure.

Ahead of a cabinet discussion, the council leader said: “This is excellent news for Otterpool Park and for the district as a whole.”

The council also states it entered a collaboration agreement with Homes England to “accelerate” delivery, and that work has included delivery and phasing plans, a financial business plan, planning strategy and an infrastructure cost plan. 

Meanwhile, the project has progressed early infrastructure steps — including a wastewater treatment works and primary substation application routed via Kent County Council; which has still to be approved.

The public’s question is now simple: what does “progress” mean?

There are two ways to read the last ten years.

One is the generous reading: Otterpool Park is a once-in-a-generation settlement, and the preparatory grind — land assembly, outline planning, infrastructure consents, funding structures — is the only route to doing it properly.

The other is the democratic reading: after a decade, tens of millions spent, and a permission “resolved to grant” back in April 2023, residents are entitled to a clear, auditable account of:

• what the spending has delivered in bankable milestones (not just “workstreams”),

• what remains legally blocking the final permission,

• and what, specifically, must happen before a spade goes into the ground.

Because at more than £76.16m in land and supplier payments, the story is no longer “a project”. It is a public bet — and the clock is still running.

If you have a story we should be looking at, then please do contact us at: TheShepwayVoxTeam@proton.me – Always Discreet, Always Confidential

The Shepway Vox Team

Dissent is NOT a Crime